


Pain

by MyHusbyLooksLikeJoel (Jackswife)



Series: No Ellie [2]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-07-21 23:43:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 16
Words: 24,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7409836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackswife/pseuds/MyHusbyLooksLikeJoel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Ellie and Joel flee from Jackson, they head out west to find somewhere to live. Nothing seems to go their way. </p><p>In fact, basically everything they do hurts them. Sometimes badly.</p><p>This work follows on from the first one, and I would love if you read that one first. However, it's not compulsory. All you need to know is that choices made there lead Ellie and Joel to have to leave Jackson in a hurry and look for somewhere new to live. </p><p>I've sketched out enough story for at least 15 chapters. At the moment I think I'll be able to update weekly, if that changes you'll be the first to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Outside Jackson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel have to make their way from Jackson to somewhere. Anywhere but here has hardly been truer.

By the time they reached the outskirts of the town outside of Jackson they’d formulated something approaching a plan. They were fairly sure after the damage Ellie had inflicted on her way to Joel that both of them would be unwelcome and that they shouldn’t attempt to go back past Jackson to anywhere they might be interested to go. That had left heading west as their best option, funnelling down through the mountains into Idaho. With the additional gear and items they’d scavenged through the town Joel had been exiled to (that Ellie had taken to calling Tiptown, as if it were a city built on a rubbish dump) they would have enough to ease their passage wherever they were going.

They were having to use Horse and Callous less for riding and more as pack animals at the moment which was making getting anywhere painfully slow. Joel was nervous of getting caught in the snow in the mountains like they had in Colorado the fall and winter before. They’d barely made it into Idaho before fall storms hit and the weather grew so bad both of them considered going back to Jackson to ask if they could please be exiled until the start of the spring.

It felt like they’d been standing in the rain for years. It had probably only been three, maybe four, hours since they first set out but when Joel took a look back at the pale and cold skin and glazed eyes in Ellie’s face he decided to take the next half decent opportunity to stop. They’d started through the small town around an hour ago, an unavoidable consequence of the collapse, natural or otherwise, of a section of elevated highway. The combination of wind-whipped rain his face had meant that he almost didn’t recognise he was looking at water streaming over the edge of the highway before he led the both of them off it.

He halted abruptly, drawing objections from the horses and earning a grouchy sounding moan from Ellie. Before he turned to her he did a quick calculation. Had it really been over a month since their last normal week in Jackson? Joel turned ready to soothe a pre-menstrual Ellie.

He promised her they could stop at the earliest possible opportunity, as soon as they found somewhere safe, and that he would find her something that she would like. He’d scavenged up some of the sweet treats that were sometimes handed out in ration packs in the QZ and stashed them for just such an event and he’d even managed to keep hold of two different cans of soda. Ellie’s body still wasn’t used to having cycles yet. He’d probably have to find something he could heat up and wrap in a shirt for her to use as a heat pack.

He’d expected a grunt at this kindness, possibly to be told angrily that she could carry on. After all, his Ellie was tough as nails. It was one of the things that he loved the most about her. So when her face crumpled, her eyes filled with tears and her lip began to quiver he went hurriedly over what he had said to make sure he hadn’t accidentally called her names or something.

“You’re so nice to me…” she honked. “And, and and I’m such a bitch.” She started to wail in earnest.

“Aw, fuck Ellie; can’t this wait until we’re in the dry?”

She glared at him. He’d probably pay for this later, might even have to go so far as to make sure she couldn’t kill him in his sleep. But at least this version of Ellie would get them down into the town and bunked somewhere warm and dry fairly fast.

In all he figured it had taken them just over an hour to find the high school, realise it had never been used as an evacuation staging point or refuge point, and that the gym would probably suit their needs. He was just finishing up setting up a fire when Ellie came across, finished up with searching the smallish building. They’d put the horses in the changing rooms, and he was setting up a fire in the locker room, having kicked out one of the high up windows to make sure they didn’t suffocate. He’d even had time to put out their bedrolls, one on either side of the fire.

“Found this in one of the offices,” she said, handing him a piece of paper.

It looked as if it had been printed up using a mechanical block printer, so post infection was most likely.

“Two Pines, a new community that welcomes everyone except the infected,” he read. “Sounds a bit twee. What d’you think? We ain’t exactly got much of a plan here.”

“I figure it’s not that far out of town if you want to check it out. Worst case scenario we waste a day.”

Joel thought that was hopelessly optimistic for someone who was so well acquainted with the worst case scenario but decided not to bring it up. He offered her his shirt wrapped around a glass bottle of hot water.

“Here, for, uh, you know.”

“Apology accepted, Mr Miller,” she said with a small smile while dragging her bed round to his. He looked over at her.

“Don’t want to sleep without you. You’re a great teddy bear,” she explained.

The plan was to rest up for the rest of the short day and then sleep early in preparation for a horrible day walking out to where this Two Pines was supposed to be located and hope it wasn’t an ambush spot like in Pittsburgh.


	2. Two Pines: Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel make it to Two Pines and learn a little more about the town and the locals living there.

Whatever Two Pines had been before the infection, now it had high walls and tightly guarded gates. It looked like it had been a new development of houses, some completed before the infection and some thrown up since. The walls had originally been hoardings with the name of the development, and now the town, written on them. They’d since been fortified.

 The people inside hadn’t had visitors. In fact, they hadn’t seen anyone outside of the town that wasn’t infected for a very long time. They put both of them into a cave with a guarded gate on it to stop them escaping. Quarantine, they said, for at least a week. The guard came up to the gate every day with enough food and fuel to make it through the next 24 hours. He (and sometimes she) would check they were still alive, and still human, before moving on. Joel suspected that quarantine wasn’t all the caves were used for but he didn’t want to ask and have to carry on so late into the season.

It was the first time they had spent together, alone, and secure since before they left Jackson. He’d wanted to know how she was really coping with Cole, and with Tommy, and now was a good time for them both to deal with how close they’d come to losing each other. They spent most of the time in the cave playing silly made up games like who could get closer to the cave entrance without being sent back by the guard; and they talked. It passed the time.

*****

When they got out of the cave there was a small welcoming party, consisting of the mayor of the town and two guards for each of the newcomers. The group them to a house they could use so long as they would follow the rules.

“You have to work to live here. You’re what 14?” Chris Carter, the mayor asked, not seeing Joel cringing behind him.

“I turn 16 early next year.”

“OK, well I think we can use your help in the medical centre,” the greying man suggested.

Ellie blanched, and Joel was there immediately with a hand on her arm.

“Can’t she do nothin’ else? Had a bad time with the doctor in the last town we were in,” he said his voice soft and gentle to help keep her calm.

“I’ll see if there is something else available for your daughter, Mr Miller, but those are the rules. You want to stay here you have to work, and you can’t live with people you aren’t related to. Two simple things that have been vital to keeping this society strong and united since the infection took hold and started to cleanse the Earth. You will be stationed on the walls.”

Neither he nor Ellie had corrected them when they assumed the two must be father and daughter. He was feeling very conflicted about not having been truthful right up until the guy had said he would separate them if there were any issues. Truth be told, they seemed to be a little distant at the moment and perhaps taking some time where they couldn’t have a sexual relationship would make Ellie feel like he cared about her for more than her body.

*****

Ellie’s first friend in Two Pines came from four houses down the block. Her name was Esmerelda and she worked in the cafeteria. She had dark brown eyes and black hair that curled down past her shoulders. Her lips looked soft and Ellie thought she was so beautiful that she never would have talked to her if Esme hadn’t come to see her first. She had rocked up on their snow covered doorstep three weeks after they had arrived in Two Pines from quarantine telling Joel at the door that she was going to walk Ellie to work. They hadn’t managed to secure her a different placement but at least they had managed to delay her starting somewhat while the town asked around.

“I was going to take her, miss…?”

“I’m Esme. Esmerelda Fernandez. And you’re Joel Miller.”

“Uh, yeah. I am.”

He turned at the sound of Ellie coming back down the stairs.

“It’s OK Dad,” she said, and smirked at the look on his face. “I would love for Esme to walk me to work.”

Esme left the porch to wait in the street. Joel took the opportunity to raise an eyebrow at his “child”.

“What,” Ellie hissed, “She’s cute and she wants to be my friend.”

Joel looked like he might fillet the girl for taking away his time with Ellie. He wanted to pretend he wasn’t feeling jealous, but the truth was that he would happily gut his way through the entire town if it got him more time with Ellie in a safe place, preferably thirty years ago when they both would have been safe from infection, and all the things that came after it. Ellie pecked him on the cheek midway through his mental list of things he would have loved to have shown Ellie, if they still existed.

Esme had dropped Ellie off at the makeshift hospital that morning, promising to collect her from that exact spot that evening. The hospital was a smaller building than Ellie had expected, with several large tents grafted onto the open doors and holes in the walls to expand it. The department she would be working with would be the recovery ward. It was dangerous to go outside the hoardings, and people were often injured, sometimes severely. As long as there were no bite marks the injured people would be brought here, treated as best as is possible with mostly herbal medicines and bandages.

Though the technology might be lacking, the nursing staff wasn’t and Ellie spent her first day helping to change bandages and giving a very memorable sponge bath to Mrs Wilkerson, who had just given birth and was having trouble keeping herself clean. Ellie had just had a brisk introduction to the parts of herself that Joel found so alluring while cleaning them on someone else. She swore she’d never understand guys.

After finishing her shift, she stumbled outside into the gathering dark and looked round. She spotted her victim quickly and grabbed for the snow before calling her name.

“Hey, Esme!” Ellie yelled.

Esme looked up, even started to smile at the approach of the redhead, when she was suddenly hit in the face with a loose handful of powder.

“Boosh!”

Esme brushed snow from her face with an expression that was half smile, half grimace.

“And to think, I managed to find you a gift to celebrate your first day too,” she complained. “Think I’ll keep it for myself now.”

“Aw,” Ellie moaned. “What is it?”

Esme glared at Ellie.

“C’mon, you can tell me,” she said, earnestly with her best attempt at puppy-dog eyes. Considering she had never seen a puppy do the same thing it was impressive.

Esme tried to keep glaring but couldn’t hold it together and started to laugh. She reached into her bag and handed something over to her new friend.

“The big book of Texas sayings,” Ellie read from the red and blue cover of the thin book.

“Yeah, I heard one of the women saying that she had met you in the cafeteria with your dad and that he’s from Texas, so I guess in a way you are. D’you like it?”

“Holy fucking shit this is amazing,” she shouted, wrapping her arms around the other girl. “Thank-you,” she said hugging her close.

“You really like it?”

“Oh yeah, I can’t wait to show this to Joel.” Ellie stopped abruptly, remembering she was supposed to call him Dad. She turned to look at Esme, who looked ill, or hurt. Either way Esme didn’t seem to have noticed the slip so they carried on the way home, with the Ellie leading the conversation with what it was like in Boston.

*****

When Joel came to bed that night, he found Ellie buried in a book, as usual. He couldn’t see the title and wasn’t especially interested. He’d had a tough day building on the walls, and just wanted to be lying down.

“You ready for bed, darlin’?”

“Well,” Ellie drawled, exaggeratedly, like she always did when she tried to copy his accent. “I was born tired, and I’ve since suffered a relapse.”

She grinned. Joel stared, a little stunned. Nobody had talked to him like that in years. Not since there had been tourists, which had been a damn long time. That kind of language was mostly sold to them. Mostly. He stuck both of his thumbs in his belt, kicked out his feet and completed his cowboy stereotype with an imaginary hat tip.

“Now, darlin’. Ain’t you just so pretty you’d make a man plow through a stump?”

Ellie giggled, which made Joel smile wider and she started to blush.

“What’s wrong? You can usually talk the gate off its hinges. You gone shy as a crocus all of a sudden.”

Joel walked over to the bed, took the book from Ellie’s hands and laid his body over hers.

“Now, I’m fixin’ tuh give you one hell of a kiss before I put out the lights. That work for you darlin’?” he drawled, thickening his accent as best he could to make her chuckle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I noticed while I was writing this one that I seem to have gone completely pronoun blind. I've been dropping him and his when I've meant her and hers. If you spot anything like that I'd love if you could point it out. Although I spell check everything before I post it, spell check doesn't always catch incorrect pronouns and I re-read everything but that's not always effective either. If anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them. 
> 
> Feedback and comments always encouraged. See you in a few days (hopefully), maximum one week from today.


	3. Two Pines: Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel sneak off for some alone time. Ellie wakes up and hears something she shouldn't.

Since their arrival in Two Pines and Ellie being made his daughter, they’d had to be more furtive about their sex life. Joel felt guilty about it every time, but it reminded him of stolen kisses and hands in pants like it had been when he was in high school and he found the whole thing nostalgically arousing. He wanted to imprint on her that she was his, no matter how cute she found this Esme. It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to make himself more important to her than someone more appropriate.

He’d been on his way to the cafeteria for lunch when he saw her in the street ahead of him. She’d had her back to him but was still oh so recognisable with her red hair tied back and swishing side to side as she walked. He caught up to her and dropped an arm around her shoulders.

“Hey darlin’.”

“Fuck Joel, you shouldn’t sneak up on an armed woman like that!”

“You’re packin’ heat at the hospital?”

“After what you told me about hospitals after the outbreak? Fuck yes.”

“Right,” he said, gruffly. Then he remembered why he had been seeking her in the first place and brightened up. “Want to slip away for a few minutes?”

“And do what?”

Joel winked, grinning rakishly.

“Oh. You got a place in mind? I don’t have long.”

“Checked it out a week ago. Figured we might need some place private an’ we can’t always make it back to the house.”

“You devil,” she said with a smile. “Go on then, show me.”

He caught Ellie by the hand in the street and dragged her into a half-collapsed building that was rarely used or visited. The building was rubble-strewn, had a musty, mildew smell, and was cold. It was also private and had only one way in or out. It suited their needs.

He kissed her gently, like he was trying to press his soul to hers and then cocked his head to one side with a raised eyebrow. She nodded and undid her belt and the button at the top of her pants. She was still so skinny that much more than that would have them around her ankles. That done, she leaned slightly against the wall behind her and tugged on his shirt to bring him closer.

He edged closer to her and slid a hand palm-down over her breasts and down her stomach before slipping into her underwear. He whispered in her ear about what he would do to her when they got a chance, while rubbing his fingers over her clit just fast enough to tease.

“Joel, this was supposed to be fast. I have to be back at work in five minutes.”

“You want me to stop?”

“No, please. Don’t stop.” The urgency in her voice left Joel feeling conflicted. He wanted to push himself inside her against the wall, but that would make her late and the Ward Sister could be downright vindictive to those who broke the rules.

“Tell me about Esme,” he said, shocking even himself with the subject change.

“Like what?”

Ellie had opened her eyes and they really didn’t have time to be messing round. He had to save this, and racked his brain.

“You want her to lick your pussy don’t you?”

“Fuck Joel,” she wailed. Her pussy clenched against the two fingers he had slid inside her with the question.

He grinned, and pulled them back to work back against her clit again.

“You want me to fuck you from behind while you eat her out? How about I line you both up and swap from one delicious clit to the other and back, over and over? We’ll have to go sex shop hunting again and find you girls a strap-on to use.”

Ellie moaned, bit his shoulder through his thick shirt and spasmed her way through an orgasm. Joel rubbed himself against her hip a few times, but pulled away before he got too worked up.

“Your turn?” she asked, breathlessly. “Joel?”

“Tonight, darlin’. And I’ll pull out all the big guns.”

She nestled against him, hummed contentedly and then pulled back.

“I have to go.”

“I know, see you later.”

His cock twitched at the sight of her perfectly rounded ass in those pants they made her wear. He wanted to stroke himself, was cursing himself for not taking the offer she was giving him, but he also knew that if he did he would disappoint her tonight. He was starting to feel his age as he lost his ability to recover. He tried not to think about her boss, the French-Canadian Ward Sister, Jacqueline. She was strict; he knew that from having injured himself while fixing a wall. The jury said bruised but not broken but she was tough on him for having done it. Thinking about her wasn’t really helping, and thinking about her bossing Ellie around definitely wasn’t. He followed the same route Ellie had taken out of the room and went back to his shift manning the walls.

*****

Ellie had been late back to her shift, as she had feared. Jacqueline didn’t distinguish between two minutes late and two hours. Ellie sighed as she started an afternoon of all the jobs nobody else wanted to do, hours of emptying bedpans and sponging down the guys who had been caught by that flame trap somewhere out on patrol.

By the time she got home she was swaying with exhaustion but wanted to pay Joel back for the time he’d spent on her that afternoon. He’d sat her down with a meal from the cafeteria, some kind of stew. Once she had fed herself she felt her eyes drooping. She tried to stay awake, to stand in front of her lover and offer herself to him. He’d swept her into his arms, carrying her towards the bed, but she was asleep against his chest before they got there.

Ellie had woken in the darkness, sleeping next to Joel in the safety of Two Pines and unsure what had awakened her. She froze and waited to see if she could figure it out. In the quietness of the night she heard Joel hiss out a breath and the arm on the other side of her started to move. She could hear the sound of skin sliding on skin and put together fairly quickly that her lover was getting himself off.

She wanted to interrupt, to let him know she was awake, and that she didn’t understand. Earlier that evening she had leaned against him, and palmed his cock through his pants and he had said he was OK and brought her to bed to sleep. So why had he waited for her to fall asleep before stroking his dick? She wanted to listen. She had seen him touch himself any number of times in the earlier part of their relationship when he had been showing her what he liked, but he’d never let her watch him do it until he came.

His movements were coming faster, his hips pressing upward into his hand and he was breathing more heavily. He turned his head away from her into his pillow, and paused with his hand just below the tip of his cock as he came, moaning softly into the pillow and shuddering slightly. He grabbed his sock from the floor beside the bed and used it to clean himself up, and was glad he hadn’t woken Ellie. She had come back from her shift at the medical centre exhausted and barely kept her eyes open through dinner. He’d wanted to take her to bed when she’d put her hand on his dick but he’d thought it was better if, when he did so, that he tucked her in and let her get some sleep.


	4. Two Pines: Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barefoot and pregnant?

“Barefoot and pregnant is supposed to be a cliché, Joel,” she hissed at him.

They were standing on the scrap of muddy ground that served as the town square watching a line of young women standing on the rough pine stage Joel had helped build earlier that week and a the mayor pulling numbers from a cage that would be familiar to anyone who had ever played bingo. So far everyone else in the crowd seemed happy enough with the situation, and the place had something like a carnival atmosphere, with food stalls, a fire pit over which a whole pig was being roasted and a bow-shooting range where a young man could win himself a soft toy for his young lady. It almost felt wholesome.

Ellie couldn’t believe that Joel had refused to let her be lotteried off to any guy that wanted her for at least another year but wasn’t intervening to help her best, and possibly only, friend. They’d found out about the spring lottery in the late winter, almost by accident. Someone had mentioned it to Joel while he was working, asking if his daughter was old enough to be “blessed” by involvement. It was abhorrent to both of them that they took the names of all the girls, and draw the numbers of all the single men for each girl to find out who they would marry. Mostly the women had only just turned 16 and the men were largely several years older as it was necessary to be either over 30 or to have given five years of service to the town. Ellie might not quite be using the term the right way but Joel couldn’t argue with her: the women were seen as a way to continue the town and their choice wasn’t considered at all. At least he had been allowed to opt out of getting married. With a small amount of bullying it had been possible to withdraw Ellie as well, at least for another year.

“They said that arranged marriages had been successful for many hundreds of years in cultures all around the globe. It was hard to argue with that. Even harder to argue with them pointin’ out it has kept the population stable. You know they haven’t had any new people for six years before us.”

Ellie looked like she was about to protest, so Joel grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the crowds.

“Look, right now the only way I can help Esme it to ask her to marry me and hope she says yes before the draw. Is that what you want?”

Ellie looked torn; she really did want to help her friend. Then she thought back to that day in the winter when Joel had dragged her into the collapsing building and what he had said to her.

“So, when you said all that stuff about her… you meant it? That night you woke me up touching yourself, after you turned me down, were you thinking of her?”

“What?” Joel was stumped for a second. “No!” He looked around again to make sure nobody was watching and dragged her further away from the crowds. “Ellie, no way, you hear. That was just fantasy, for both of us, you remember. Told you before, I ain’t sharing you with nobody. Nobody for me but you darlin’.” He stroked a hand tenderly over her face.

Joel wondered how she could think he would want anyone but her. He thought he had been clear with the things he did for her, the way he touched her, the way he protected her that for him there was no choice. He thought his love for her was clear in the way he held her to him as a way to soothe his soul. Maybe it wasn’t enough for her. Maybe she needed him to say the words and he knew he’d been lax in that. It was stupid, but a part of him feared saying it. Like there was a quota, a maximum number of times he could say it before she would be taken from him.

“Ellie, I know I don’t say it often but darlin’ I love you. I want you. Not nobody else, no matter who they are. When I go to sleep and when I wake up it’s you I want there and I want to be with you even when I’m dreamin’. When you heard me, uh, doin’ that, uh. I was thinkin’ of you. I promise you, I ain’t marryin’ nobody else.”

*****

Ellie was walking to work when she saw Esme in the street ahead of her. The two friends hadn’t seen each other since the lottery, after which Esme had moved in with her new husband in a different part of town. Ellie was keen to catch up, a lot had happened in the last couple of weeks. There were a few minutes before the start of the early shift at the cafeteria and the hospital. They had time to get together with each other for a few minutes, longer if they walked and talked.

“Esme,” she yelled. “Hey, Esme!”

Esme looked round and when she recognised Ellie turned and hurried off.

When Ellie got home that night she had told Joel about Esme’s strange behaviour earlier that day. Joel followed her pacing from the kitchen table. He kept trying to interject and get her to settle down and eat but he was realising that this was futile and he would need to let Ellie’s anger burn itself out first.

“She just sprinted off like I was something to be frightened of. It’s fucking strange Joel. She made such an effort to be friends when we first fucking got here and now she hates me for no reason.”

Joel knew from experience just how unpleasant teenaged girls could be to each other and thought the animosity might have something to do with him pulling Ellie from the lottery.

“Well, Ellie, she has just been forced to marry some guy she doesn’t even know. Everythin’ about her life has changed. She’s probably just jealous that you get to have an extra year at home with your dear old dad.”

“You could be right,” Ellie begrudgingly admitted. She sat down heavily, with a sigh, and began pushing the food he’d served up half an hour ago around on her plate.

*****

Ellie caught up to Esme a few days later after she asked her mother where she was living now. On her morning off she had headed across the subdivision to catch up with her friend outside her house. At first Esme had ignored her when she’d left the building. It wasn’t until the two had nearly reached the outdoor market at the end of her block and Ellie had apparently annoyed the girl enough that she spoke.

“It’s alright for you,” Esme yelled. “We don’t all have a big scary guardian who forces people to change the rules for them.”

“It’s not like I asked him to do that, Esme. You have to know that!”

People in the street were starting to look at the arguing girls. Ellie wanted to move this conversation somewhere more private; she had learned from Joel that it wasn’t sensible for everyone to know what your business was. She put a hand onto Esme’s arm to guide her into one of the many alleys in the market area, but the hand was roughly thrown off and Esme turned to square up to Ellie.

“You want to know what the worst thing is? I work my butt off all day, and then I come home and clean the house and mend his clothes and take care of him and all my wonderful husband can say is how he wished you weren’t taken out of the lottery.”

Ellie was poleaxed. She knew Joel seemed to like her, though she was stumped to reason out why. The idea that other men might find her attractive had literally never occurred to her.

“He’s always asking me to be more like you. Like he wants me to cut my hair like yours.”

Ellie remembered. She had taken care of Will Hunter when he had been injured about a month before the lottery. He’d always been very polite to her but she hadn’t ever considered that he was flirting. When she reflected on it, the fact that he’d been laughing back and forth with her while she was washing his naked body could have been from discomfort but could have been him trying to get her to say yes to a date.

“What, uh, what should I do?”

“Just leave the both of us alone. Better yet, you’re not from here. Why don’t you go back where you came from?”


	5. Two Pines: Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Esme makes things hard for Ellie and Joel

 

It was a warm spring day and Ellie was showering with the blinds open and the window wide to let the late morning sunshine stream through. Their garden was filled with mature trees that formed a screen between them and their near neighbours. She felt totally safe in the green-tinted shelter of the room. She wallowed in the warm water flowing across her skin and relished the scent of the rose soap Joel had gotten hold of. It wasn’t to her taste, more often than not now she stole his soaps if there wasn’t anything citrus, but she knew he liked it and wanted to smell of roses for him.  The last time she had used it, he’d buried his face in her hair and carried her straight to bed.

When she finished she stepped out and grabbed her towel. As she wrapped it around herself she saw a flicker of motion from the garden. Her eyes came up to catch sight of her crush, Esme, in the garden, apparently waiting for her to get out of the shower. Briefly, Ellie considered that the crush was mutual which made her spirit soar. Even if she wouldn’t cheat on Joel, it was an ego boost to have someone else interested. Then she saw the look of horror and disgust on Esme’s face and followed her gaze to her right forearm.

“Oh, motherfucker!”         

She grabbed the towel and yanked open the bathroom door, calling for Joel. They met at the bottom of the stairs.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, even as his eyes moved appreciatively over the sweetly scented exposed flesh in front of him.

“She saw me. She fucking saw me Joel. Like this. She saw the mark on my arm.”

Ellie had started forcefully, but then shyly covered her scar with her left hand as she spoke. Joel reassured her, saying they didn’t know what would happen and tugged her hand away so he could press his mouth against the ridged and bubbling flesh of her healed scar.

There was a knock at the door.

“Oh good, in this town they knock,” Joel muttered blackly before shooing Ellie upstairs to get changed.

When he opened the door, he came face to face with Esme, her new husband Will and Chris, the mayor of Two Pines.

“That was fast. What do you want?”

“Joel, Esme came to me today with some concerning information regarding your daughter. May we come in?” Chris was carrying a bible and Joel was now starting to worry about where it was they were living.

Joel huffed a sigh, as if trying to indicate how inconvenient they were being, before he stood aside and the group on the doorstep trooped into his home.

“Where is your daughter, Mr Miller?” asked Will.

“She’ll be right down, she was just in the shower.”

“Yes, that is what we wanted to talk to you about. Esme was passing the back of your house and happened to see your girl getting out of the shower. Seems young Ellie has a mark on her arm like the devil bit her,” explained Chris.

“Wait, what?” Joel asked, not really believing what he was hearing. It seemed like they wandered into a latter-day Salem without even realising.

“She’s a witch Mr Miller,” said Esme, sounding sad but with a vindictive look of pleasure on her face.

Joel wanted to bark hard laughter into their faces but that didn’t feel like a smart choice. While he was thinking what to do next, he saw Ellie, dressed with a long sleeved shirt and a look of worry on her face at the top of the stairs. He wondered how much she had overheard. She arrived at the group in the hallway and stood close to Joel as if she was seeking reassurance. He put his arm around her shoulders to provide her with what little comfort he could.

“Now, Ellie, do you deny you consorted with the devil and that he bit you on the arm?” asked Chris.

“What?” Ellie looked as confused as Joel felt.

Joel was silently pleased she had managed not to swear. He couldn’t imagine being her usual confrontational self would be helpful right now.

“Show us your forearms Ellie. If there’s no mark, we will leave in peace,” Chris instructed.

Ellie looked frantically at Joel, her wide eyes begging him to get her out of this, but he had nothing. Not a single idea beyond murder all three and hope to make it to the gate before the news, but they already knew that this kind of news travels mighty fast after Ellie had fled Jackson.

Ellie slowly rolled up her left sleeve. Everyone scrutinised the smooth pale skin of her arm and decided it passed muster. As she unbuttoned her right cuff, Joel thought she looked like a condemned prisoner stepping up to the firing line.

“What’ll you do if she is a witch?” he asked realising how ridiculous and desperate he sounded to his own ears.

“She’ll be free to leave. She can pack her things and be escorted from the town. You’re free to stay or to go with her but if you leave, neither of you will be allowed to return,” the mayor explained.

Ellie pushed her sleeve up and the three town locals gasped collectively. The smooth flesh, lightly freckled and slightly fuzzed with red hair was broken by the ugly half-moon shape of the healed scar.

“It’s just a bite. It’s healed, from months ago. Some asshole grabbed me and bit me,” she explained, carefully omitting just why it was that the asshole wanted to bite her.

“She has to go,” Esme said, aggressively.

“Hey now,” Joel said putting his body between Ellie and her accusers. “Let’s talk about this some more, she ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”

The other three looked at each other and then Chris Carter took a step forward.

“We understand your desire to protect your daughter, Mr Miller, but our rules are clear on this subject.”

“You never mentioned these rules when we got her. You guys waited for someone to be lookin’ at her when they shouldn’t be to bring this up. And how were you lookin’ anyway? You can’t see into the bathroom from the road behind the house.”

Esme smiled an ugly smile but Carter got there first.

“It doesn’t matter, she has the mark. She has to go.”

*****

Over an hour later Ellie was packing up and Joel was packing from room to room, extremely agitated.

“What are you doin’? Stop packin’, you ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“It’s OK Joel, I’m gonna go,” said a resigned Ellie. “You can stay.”

“What? What would make you think I’d want to stay without you? I thought we had sorted this out when Esme got married.”

Joel huffed angrily and stomped out the room and down the stairs, coming to rest on the back porch where he could take a break and sort out how he was feeling before he went and got mad at Ellie for something that wasn’t her fault. Ever since she had brought up hearing him masturbate when she had been sleeping and her fear that he secretly wanted someone else he’d realised that she had been feeling insecure. He wasn’t sure how to deal with it or how to help her deal with it. His anger had left him blind to the fact that if he stayed down here too long that she would leave town without him. He realised what would happen and rushed back towards the house.

He opened the door to the house and realised it was suspiciously quiet. He threw himself up the stairs, his heart breaking in his chest with every step. He opened the door to the bedroom and found no sign of her or the bags she had been packing. He grabbed his backpack from under the bed where he had left it ready as a go bag. He’d learned from hard experience that it’s important to be able to leave town fast. He grabbed as much of the other gear he could pack in an hour, not wanting her to get too far away. He could barely concentrate through his fear for what could be happening to her out there on her own. Every few minutes the memory of David forced it’s way to the surface and he had to wrestle it back.

He raced to the stables, glad that the townspeople had decided that to best shame Ellie she would have to leave on foot. He would have the advantage chasing her down on the horses. It was a strange reflection of the time that they had left Jackson, though with dramatically less blood spilled. At least Ellie hadn’t had to fight her way out this time: there was that to be thankful for. He saddled both the horses and loaded them up before riding to the gate.  

“Open the damn gate,” he growled.

The ruddy-faced gate guard hesitated and asked him if he really wanted to chase down a witch.

“She’s my god-damned girl; of course I’m goin’ after her.”

*****

He caught up to Ellie on the road back to the High School where she had found the leaflet, struggling under the weight of two bags on her back. The fury he felt at her having left without saying goodbye blew itself out instantly in the joy of finding her intact. Joel swelled with pride and admiration at her determination. He rode past her, reined the horses up and jumped down. She had stopped and glared at him. When she caught up and walked right on past, Joel joined her, leading the horses just behind him.

“So, uh, where are we off to darlin’?”

“We?”

“Told you, I wasn’t goin’ to go on livin’ in any place that you ain’t. What do I got to do to prove it to you?”

“Joel, how do you see our future going?”

“Right now, I figure we keep on heading out west,” he dodged. He knew what she was asking but what could he tell her. For all that he wanted to spend all his mornings and all his evenings with her it might not turn out that way and he didn’t want to make a long term plan to see it shredded in front of his eyes again.


	6. To Oregon: Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel talk bucket lists and decide to head out west.

Joel and Ellie had set out from the high school in Idaho heading for the Oregon coast. The weather had been kind to them and several nights they had been able to pitch their tarpaulin and string hammocks beneath to sleep outside. They had been following the remains of I84, picking it up outside the ruins of Boise and heading towards Portland. They spent most of their time far away from towns, in areas that time had given back to the non-human world. The years had cracked the road surface, spread grasses and flowers into the smashed concrete and the verges grew high with wild plants. The occasional car had been left where it had run out of gas, abandoned and stripped over and over by not only the people who left it but by anyone who passed it by and often by bears and raccoons. Leaving the car unlocked might leave people safe havens in bear country but bears could work car door handles.

While they walked they spent their time equally between silent reflection, mind-numbing drudgery and infrequent conversation. Ellie wanted to know everything about Joel and his life before the infection. Sometimes he picked topics that felt safer than the one Ellie wanted. Joel had introduced Ellie to the idea of bucket lists, as a way of steering her away from the story of his daughter and her birthday wishes. Ellie knew what he was doing, but didn’t push.

“Wait, so you just made lists of things you hoped you might do one day?”

“Yeah, they’re things you wish you could. Don’t imagine half of them are possible anymore.”

“What was on yours?” Ellie asked.

“I wanted to travel.” Joel chuckled bitterly. “I always wanted to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Guess I’m close to crossin’ that one off.”

Joel had never planned to go from Texas to Boston, to Jackson and now to wherever. There were a lot of things in his life now that he had never thought to imagine. By this point in his life Joel had thought he would be meeting his daughter’s partner, maybe even showing off his grandkids at the park.

After their bucket list conversation Joel found himself looking for somewhere to stop. While they could cover 40 miles in a day if they had to, like when they had fled from David’s followers, they didn’t need to rush right now. The people in Two Pines had been very clear that they wouldn’t pursue them if they left. They had time to enjoy the spring sunshine and they had time to heat a pouch of beans and roast the squirrel he had shot that morning.

“Joel, what’s on your bucket list now?”

“Endure and Survive,” he said hoping to buy some time. She laughed but continued to look at him with expectance.

“I guess I’d like to see a bison some time. Maybe find a place to put some roots down. Eat some ice cream. Sleep in the same bed every night ‘til I get old and grey,” he saw her about to interject. “Fine, greyer, you pain in the ass. Until I have to get up three times a night to have a piss. Maybe have a rocker on the porch, spend my evenin’s sharin’ it with you.”

*****

They’d settled for the night inside a concrete storage centre. It was half burnt out and probably riddled with clickers but he had found two sound, intact sheds next to each other. Having shivved open each of the doors and replaced the lock on the one for the horses he joined Ellie in the other. She had laid out their blankets and sleeping rolls onto the floor in one great pile, and lit candles to give the room an almost romantic ambiance. Joel was moving inside Ellie when she began to weep. Tears were streaming down her face. He pulled back immediately, already softening, concerned.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

She sniffed loudly and let him gather her into his body. His arms wrapped around her body and held her against his chest, tugging the blankets around them to keep their naked bodies warm. He let her sob against his skin hoping when she was done they’d be able to talk about what it was that was bothering her. Joel had prided himself before his relationship with Ellie on being able to tell when something was wrong with whoever was his partner. Before Jackson this had been easy with Ellie, even some of the time before they became lovers. The feeling of bewilderment of not being in control because he hadn’t the slightest idea of which of their particular troubles was bothering was not a sensation he relished.

“What kind of future can we have? Will we ever not have to lie to the people around us about what we mean to each other? We can’t even live in one place for much longer than a season without them finding out my scar and throwing us out. You talked about them trying to marry you off to some other girl but what are your plans for us to have a future together?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean do you want to get married, have children, settle down some place, what?”

“I don’t know Ellie. Seems kinda pointless even makin’ plans half the time. Ain’t like any plan I’ve had since I was 16 years old has ever come close to goin’ right.”

Ellie’s face was pale, her green eyes wet and reddened with tears. Joel’s heart hurt to see the pain on her face, but he couldn’t think what to say to take her pain onto himself. He felt like an embattled soldier planning for a future he might never live to see. They’d had short periods of life that were about more than just surviving, about more than just making it to tomorrow. During them he had come to realise he wanted to live all his tomorrows with her. Tess, though, had taught Joel that planning could be pointless. It wasn’t that long ago that he had fantasised about settling down with her. Albeit that Tess had been perfectly clear that no matter his thoughts on the matter, he was just a convenient warm body and nothing more.

“It ain’t that I don’t want you. I just, I can’t keep makin’ plans that don’t work out. Darlin’, please don’t ask me to. I want to spend as much of my life with you as I’m able. Ain’t that enough?”

She saw the tears begin to form in his eyes and realised the pain he was feeling at the idea of trying to spell out a future for the pair of them. It was her turn to be the comforting one.

“Joel, it’s enough. It’s what I want as well.” She rubbed her fingers across his eyelids to wipe off his tears and gently kissed his lips.

*****

Sometimes it made him feel sick that he didn’t feel sick over his attraction for her. How he’d stopped caring what anyone else might think and started craving her touch. He didn’t like to admit it but after her outburst two nights ago he’d started to feel exceptionally clingy and had found himself trying to hike while leading two horses and holding her by the hand. He’d woken up three times last night to find she had rolled away from him and eased a protective hand over her hips again. He loved her, god help him, and she was trying to pull back from him. He knew what she was doing, that she was trying to prevent hurt but he couldn’t seem to stop himself racing toward her full-bore. He loved her, and while it might not literally kill him when she left it would irredeemably shatter the barely healed remnants of his soul. The fact that she might not leave never entered his mind. So he found himself clinging to her, enhancing the sense memory of her body for the cold and lonely times when his memories and fantasies were the only things keeping the meagre remnants of his psyche warm. He struggled, but finally fell asleep.

 “Joel,” Ellie whispered as quietly as she could.

He stirred and came awake.

“What is it?” he mouthed back at her, adding the barest amount of voice behind it.

“C’mere. You gotta see this.”

He crept along with her in front of him, low and slow. They slipped under the edge of the tarp and crawled away about 50 feet from it to where the trees cleared and the grassland rolled away. Her hand went up to signal him to halt. She pointed at her eyes and then in front of them and to their right. Joel tried not to gasp. In front of him was a small group of bison, around 5 adults and 2 calves. He knew that before the infection people had farmed bison in the area and that these must have gotten out. He was in awe of the huge creatures which formed such a part of the wildlife he thought of when he imagined America. He was so glad that Ellie was the one who was helping him cross this one off his list.


	7. To Oregon: Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our intrepid adventurers make their way into a gas station to find a map for the rest of their journey into Oregon.

Three days into Oregon they’d stopped at a rural gas station to hunt out a map for the next portion of their journey and any supplies or anything they could sell. They’d lost a lot of their inventory when Joel came after her from Two Pines. An exterior search turned up nothing spectacular, some rotten newspapers in a stand and a bathroom that still reeked of ammonia more than 20 years later. The glass in the doors was blown out, but the insides seemed free from humans, infected or animal entrance.

Joel slipped inside, pistol in hand, and searched the counter. He found the gas station maps behind it and sighed. At some point the remains of a pot of coffee had spilled on them and rendered them a congealed, mouldering mass. As he turned he found a stand run by the local National Parks Service team.

At the stand, along with several postcards and pamphlets describing attractions in the area, he found a package of notebooks, each still pristine white and featuring a different native animal on the cover, a box of pencils and most importantly of all a US Geographical Survey map of Oregon. Finally, it seemed like he was catching a break, and he let his features glow with a smile.

He left the way that he came in and saw that rather than stay where they were under the pumps Ellie had moved the horses to the grassy bank behind the gas station to let them graze. He had given her his shotgun to hold in case, and he cast an admiring glance over her. She looked good holding a weapon. He cursed himself for thinking something that he shouldn’t be spending time on while busy and attentive. He couldn’t help picturing how her soft, delicate hands looked wrapped one on top of the other on his dick with the tip still spilling out.

One deep breath and a promise to himself that he would cash later, he carried on toward the slope where Ellie was waiting. They might stop here tonight if everything looked clear. As he walked past the reeking bathroom, he heard an odd groaning noise. He stepped up his pace to get past when a stalker smashed through the door like they did in his nightmares. The stalker grabbed him, though it was incapacitated by only having one arm. It wasn’t a new injury. It looked like whoever this guy had been had lost it years before getting infected.

It was making it easier to fend the stalker off but it was astride him and he was lying on the pistol that he’d returned to his back pocket. Joel held off the face that drooled at him with animal lust with one hand while he reached for the shivs on his belt with the other. At full stretch he got two fingers to one of them and slipped it free before raising his hand and viciously slamming the knife into the stalker’s neck. It screamed and arched its back, lifting the head away from him. Joel was focussed. Unlike the fight in the cheap hotel in Colorado, he wasn’t distracted by the fury of wasting his life. He was about to raise up and throw the stalker off when its head exploded. He looked round to where the shot must have come from and saw Ellie with his shotgun in her hands.

He stood up, recalling the thought that had come to him just before the fight about Ellie holding weapons with a smile. Then he looked at her and stopped still. She had a look of complete horror on her pale face.

“Ellie, it’s OK, I’m not hurt.”

“Y-y-your f-f-face,” she stuttered. “Oh God,” she moaned.

He put a hand up, and felt several pellet wounds on his cheek from the shot Ellie had taken. They were on his right cheek, which had been facing away from Ellie when she took the shot. The pellets must have ricocheted from either the bones or the fungal plates of the stalker. And that meant that he could be infected, with only hours to live, right now. He hadn’t felt the shots. But it wasn’t as if something similar hadn’t happened to him before. One time outside of St Louis on the slow march to Boston he’d been stabbed and barely notice until the adrenaline wore off. Like then, now he couldn’t stop noticing. He took two steps towards Ellie before doubling over and puking up his guts onto his feet.

*****

Before the infection broke out, right around the time his daughter turned a year old there had been a song on the radio that reflected upon the Cold War. He’d sung it to his daughter countless times because she’d liked dancing to it. The lyrics popped into his head now, unasked for. “Four minutes left to go, is this the end then? Message on your stereo, four minute warning.” At the time he’d been 17 years old and felt invincible. The idea of what he would really do if he only had minutes to live had been purely academic since he planned on living forever for his baby daughter.

He looked up. Ellie looked crushed. Poor kid was hardly even sixteen and could have killed the only person she had left in the world, the only person left that really cared about her. That she had fought so hard to protect, to rescue while they were in Jackson. What was she going to do now? They were miles from anywhere, without a plan beyond keep heading west and find somewhere safe to live that wouldn’t kick Ellie out because she was immune.

“C’mere Ellie,” he said, with a lump in his throat. He shifted towards her, took the shotgun, checked it over, reloaded it and put it back onto his pack. The motion seemed to trigger something in her and she moaned before wailing in his arms, eyes screwed tight shut and her body juddering. He’d seen this before in people who had seen people they loved killed.

“It’s alright Ellie. It’s gonna be OK, I promise,” he said in a soft and he hoped soothing undertone.

“How?” she practically howled. “How can it possibly be OK?”

“You’re OK. That’s how it will be OK.”

“What… What do we do now?”

“We treat tonight like it’s our last night on Earth, and we hope that we like the way the world looks in the mornin’. Now, dry those pretty eyes of yours darlin’.” He brushed his thumbs across each of her cheekbones, sweeping aside the tears. “And after that? We endure and survive.”

He kissed each of her tear-steaked cheeks and nudged her nose across to tilt her head so he could kiss her mouth. She was slow to respond but when she did she was feverish with passion. He was losing himself against her lips, chasing her tongue with his until the two of them felt lost. He stroked her lips with his, placed a hand on her ass and another on her lower back and dragged her as close to him as she could go. Her hands landed on him, one on his belt at the front of his pants and the other in his hair. Ellie rubbed her body against his, his cock hard and bulging at the front of his pants making her moan when her hip scraped over it. He caught the sound in his mouth and let out a similar sound when she repeated the motion. The hand on her ass squeezed the cheek firmly and the other hand came round to her breast, pinching at the already solid nipple.

When he came up for air he realised they were in danger of fucking right there on the floor next to a pile of his puke on the left and the corpse of a stalker on the right and if this was to be their last time together he wanted it to be a different memory for her.

“Wait, Ellie, not here.”

The next few minutes were a blur of tying the horses out for the night, grabbing the blankets from them and setting up a soft nest in the gas station’s back office. Time slowed back down when he came back from cleaning his face (and his boots) to find her completely naked, looking him up and down while a hand moved lazily in the red-thatched area between her thighs.

“Fuck!”

He quickly crossed the room, dropped to his knees, ignoring when they creaked, and kissed her.

Joel laid himself over Ellie, legs spread to either side of hers, shirt covered chest pressed to naked one, lips moving slower than before. He wanted to keep in control for as long as possible. His lips met hers over and over until he was harder than steel and the small room smelled intensely of her arousal.

He pulled back, undid his belt and fly to let his dick spring free, then knelt looking at Ellie below him while he unbuttoned his shirt and hurriedly stripped it off. When he dropped back down to kiss her again his cock pressed hotly against the cooler skin of her belly and they both moaned.

He kissed her before moving down her body, pausing to worship at her breasts, stroking at one nipple before moving to the other. He flicked his tongue at and sucked the free nipple until Ellie moaned and clutched at her lover’s hair.

“Joel, please,” Ellie gasped.

He backed off and saw her open mouth, her flushed chest heaving with heavy breaths, hard pink nipples tipping her creamy breasts. He pushed himself down her body, kissing each inch of her stomach as he descended. When he reached her pubis he rested his forehead against her lower stomach and took a deep breath to catch her scent, trying to crystallise this in his memory in case there turned out to be an afterlife for him to remember it in. He lifted each of his knees between hers and then as he dropped back to her he lifted her legs over his shoulders and pressed his face to her pussy.

He was drowning in the taste of her. Normally when he did this he was able to concentrate, even his random patterns were achieved by spelling out his favourite song lyrics on her clit. Right now though, he couldn’t muster the strength to focus and was trying to taste every inch of her, even the secret brownish star between her buttocks. When his tongue touched her there she arched off the blankets and gasped loudly as he drew long strokes from her asshole to her clit. After several strokes like this he switched and wrapped his lips around her clitoris to suck on it like he had her nipples which made her head fall back and she groaned open-mouthed. He moved on from there to nibble at her labia, before sliding two fingers inside of her and stroking the other hand up her body as he moved upward to kiss her.

“God Joel, it’s like you’re trying to touch me everywhere.”

“Oh, darlin’ I would if I could,” he breathed against her collarbone. “Now, c’mere,” he said, pulling backward and lifting and turning her onto her knees.

He left her on hands and knees while he pushed off his jeans from around his hips, then kicked off his boots and shoved his pants off and stepped out of them. His head tilted while admired her ass and the pink swollen lips below. He dropped back to his knees, grabbed each of her hips and yanked her towards him as he surged forwards. He missed her pussy and bumped against her clit. Ellie moaned loudly, so he kept on doing it, thrusting the wet tip of his cock against the dripping flesh between her legs.

He pulled back and took his right hand from her hip to position himself and thrust forward into her body. He gasped at the hotness of the velvety flesh surrounding him and rolled his hips which made her moan. While he wanted to make this last all night, he realised it wasn’t safe to do that and decided the better thing to do would be to make her come and then try not to come inside her. He started to thrust in earnest, with his hand over her hip and reaching for her clit. As he began to stroke Ellie began to move herself on his cock and he knew he was lost.

“Joel, please. Do something for me.”

“Anythin’, darlin’, what is it?”

“Come inside me.”

He stopped completely.

“What?”

“Joel, this might be the last chance we get, I don’t want to live without you, but if I have to I want something to fucking remember you by,” Ellie said while moving back and forth on his dick.

“Fuck,” he moaned, while speeding back up.

Joel had never gone out to try and make a baby. When Sarah had been made it had been an accident. There was something arousing about the idea of trying to knock his girl up. Ellie was losing herself, her thrusts back onto him became erratic and she started to pulse around his cock. As her body rippled on him he started to come himself, helpless to resist the temptation. Not a bad way to finish up his life.

He cuddled into her for a while, before he laid out his plans to keep her safe. With her still in his arms he explained what he wanted.

“I found the cash cage in the back, and the keys to it in the office. You need to lock me in there. In the morning if I’m not, y’know, me, I need you to kill it.” He paused at the look on her face. “Look, Ellie, that thing, whatever it is, it ain’t me anymore. You remember what we promised.”

“Yeah, I know what we said. I just never expected to have to do it Joel.”

“Me either, darlin’. I wish it weren’t this way. Gotta hope that we were wrong. But gotta plan as if we are right.”

*****

She shut him in the cage after they kissed for one last time, and he wistfully put a hand on her belly with a strange smile on his face and a faraway look in his eyes. He looked at her through the mesh, wrapped in a blanket as if it would insulate him from the passing on the hurt he was going to heap on her again.

“You can’t come back in here until after sunrise. Promise me.”

“I won’t. You better be here. I’ll be so pissed at you if you fuck off someplace else.”

He smiled at the brave face she was putting on.

“Love you, babygirl. It’s gonna be OK. I’ll be right here.”

She turned and left so that he wouldn’t see her cry. He collapsed onto the floor and sobbed, heavy hard sobs that left him breathless and exhausted. At some point during the darkest part of the night he caved into exhaustion and fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter early this week. I have family visiting so I might not get another chapter up until next week, so I'm sorry about the cliffhanger. If I get a chance to I will get it up as soon as possible. 
> 
> The story is nearly complete, just polishing up now.


	8. To Oregon: Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn Joel's fate.

Joel woke feeling stiff, cold and disoriented. For the first time since they’d been forcibly separated in Jackson in the late summer of last year he had woken without Ellie burrowing into his side, seeking his heat. He’d gotten used to being nearly over hot even in winter, so to wake up cold was unheard of for him.

He sat up, to figure if Ellie was unable to sleep and had gone wandering and saw the mesh of the cash-cage caught in the early pre-dawn light. Right, he was in quarantine for her safety, and wasn’t that a sobering thought. He found her curling against the bars of the cage, two fingers poking through the mesh. He slid over to her, placed his hand over hers and waited for her to wake up. He remembered asking her, pleading with her to stay out of the room, but he also knew that if it had been him he never would have left.

When she came back to herself she seemed to wake up the way he had; slowly and then in a rush. She tore her fingers out from under his in a panic and then grabbed for her flashlight to have a look at him. His eyes were clear and beautiful, if concerned; he wasn’t flushed or sweating; his skin was a normal colour with no signs of grey. Apart from dark bags under his eyes and some extra wrinkles he looked like he had last night.

“You, you look good.”

He approached her slowly and carefully placed his palm flat against the mesh. She drew closer and placed her palm over his.

“I wish I could hold you right now babygirl. Know you’re worryin’ about me.”

“You want something to eat?”

“I could eat, yeah,” he said realising it was part test and part her wanting to be helpful. “We got any peaches?”

Ellie bustled out into the other room and came back with a steaming cup of spearmint tea and a jar of preserved peaches. Joel slurped a good swallow of the tea and then popped the top off the peaches and scarfed them down with his fingers.

“These are good. You want one?”

“Uh, I’m not hungry,” Ellie mumbled.

It hit him like a lightning bolt. She was afraid he could make her sick. He felt wounded but at the same time he understood her fear. He just couldn’t look at her at the moment.

“Well, uh. Thanks for this Ellie. Uh, I uh, I need to use the facilities.”

“Oh? Oh! OK, I’ll go, uh, check on the horses or something.”

*****

All in all they waited three days before he agreed to let her let him back out. By that point he felt like the luckiest motherfucker left alive. He couldn’t understand how it could be possible to still be alive without any signs of infection at this point. Even Ellie had her freaky scar. He reasoned that the pellets that hit him must have deflected off the fungal plates the stalker had been growing on his way to becoming a clicker without damaging them. Had to be a million to one shot, but don’t those come off nine times out of ten?

He had that lived in, multiple layover, spend days travelling in the same clothes  feeling, somewhere between gritty and sticky. He didn’t want to let her touch him until he’d washed and changed his clothes. She took that decision out of his hands by throwing herself into his arms when she opened the door. She pressed her lips to his, and then peeled herself away from him.

“Ew. OK I needed that, but you stink. I’ve got water heating outside and dug out some of that pine soap we found.”

Usually when they were out on the road, certain moments in Colorado excepted, they gave each other plenty of privacy to wash up. At the moment, though, it seemed like Ellie couldn’t stop touching him, to confirm that he was still real.

He’d dumped his clothes next to the steaming bucket and seated himself on the low footstool that had been in the manager’s office, completely naked in the warm spring sunshine. Starting with his hair, he dunked his head into the hot water of the wash bucket, scrubbed the soap bar over his head and then lathered his hair until he felt clean. He plunged his head into the rinse bucket and swirled his fingers through his hair to make sure it was rinsed properly.

He took the washcloth, drenched it in the bucket and then rubbed soap into it. Then he startled when her fingers closed around the cloth and took it from him. Ellie must have come to join him while his head was underwater. He leaned back and rumbled a happy sound at the touch of her fingers brushing his skin, slicked with soap and wet with water. It was her turn to be unable to stop touching him. The scent of pine was refreshing after the days of his own stink. Ellie’s hand ran down each of his arms to the hand, her fingers between his before running back up the underside and into the swamp of his underarms before rinsing and moving on.

When Ellie moved the soapy cloth over his chest he pushed his muscles out into her hands, and shivered slightly in the breeze. His head tilted back and he kissed her neck. This was rapidly becoming delightfully distracting. She rubbed the cloth over his stomach, his legs and then down his back and over the deliciously meaty cheeks of his ass. He groaned as she cupped them and looked over his shoulder at the erection that throbbed with each heartbeat.

“You clean that up and I’ll suck it for you.”

“Damn, Ellie. You’re drivin’ me crazy here,” he said as he grabbed for the cloth, rinsed and resoaped it.

He stroked the soapy cloth firmly over himself as he looked up into her face.

“Go on inside, I’ll be right there.”

After she left he took care of his balls and his butt. He sloshed the cloth back into the bucket and stood for a moment, magnificently naked and savouring just being alive. It didn’t last long. His cock acted like a dowsing rod, leading him back to Ellie.

*****

“Please, Ellie,” he breathed.

He was lying flat on his back, with each of her small hands stacked one above the other on his cock, the copy of the fantasy that had distracted him several days before. He was watching her stroking them up and down, rhythmic and slow. It was driving him wild after the teasing of being washed.

In a glittering moment of inspiration she started to move her hands independently of each other. One was rejoining at the base and moving upwards while the one at the top was squeezing, twisting and leaving. She constantly had at least one moving hand in contact with him and made him gasp, his head falling back onto the pillow, just as his hips started to come up and thrust desperately into her hands. He was approaching the edge of his tolerance when she stopped and moved up his chest, sliding her fingers through his hair and pausing to roll her tongue over his nipples. Her breasts grazed the burning flesh of his cock and he moaned again trying to raise his hips to thrust between them. He was desperate for the stimulation but she lifted herself away from him.

She settled onto the lowest part of his stomach, pressing his dick between his hair-covered skin and the wet flesh of her pussy. Joel hissed out a breath, trying not to lose himself. Ellie shifted and his cock slid against her clit. She moaned and began to glide herself backwards and forwards on him. She was close, Joel could tell. He began to thrust against her, hands on her hips and watching her breasts swaying above him.

Her head fell back, her eyes closed; she began to moan and then she lost the ability to keep moving in the rhythm she had set for herself. Joel wanted to up the tempo of his thrusts, making them longer and faster and make his lover come. He wanted to watch her lose herself completely, but he was too close himself. He barely thrust against her fully before he began spurting.

“No… nonononononononono!”

He moaned his way through his orgasm, his cock leaping happily against Ellie’s skin and his stomach, gushing his come to tangle with his hair. His head back, he covered his eyes with his forearm, not wanting to see Ellie staring angrily down at him. When she laughed, his hand pulled away and he opened one eye.

“God, Joel. You looked so beautiful when you came but now, I’m sorry, you’re too funny.”

“I, uh, I’m sorry. I know you were close. I din’t mean to let you down.”

“Yeah, I was. But Joel, I love watching you lose it,” she nudged him, “Don’t worry so much, there’ll be other times.”

She rose, walked back to the bucket at the door and came back in with the cloth. As she cleaned his stomach off, Joel lay, completely wrung out between the pleasure of the last few minutes and the stress of the last few days.


	9. To Oregon: Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seeking supplies, our heros stumble across the perfect location.

They’d been hiking down the main highway for over a week when both of them spotted a town away to their south-east in the heat haze. A set of train tracks a short way ahead seemed to lead straight into the centre. The two of them paused while considering what to do. They were low on supplies and while there was always risk associated with heading somewhere with more people they needed food more than the cost of ammunition to take care of themselves here.

After leaving the horses at a safe looking spot they continued further into the town. There were signs of a hunter camp here which looked deserted. Joel knew from experience that this was the type of thing that could be used to ambush the unsuspecting but they had little choice. Food was scarce in the surrounding area, probably because of the hunters shooting animals for their meat. Without resupplying the two of them would begin to starve soon.

They’d been set upon by hunters. They’d been lured here so that hunters could try to kill them like the group had in Philadelphia. Their scavenging run, which had seemed like such a good idea at the time, was proving a poor one. There were five, no, six hunters ahead of them. Five were on the road and one up high, providing over-watch. Joel popped out of cover with the hunting rifle to shoot at the sniper while Ellie provided cover with both the 9mm pistols. He got off one shot, striking the sniper before he dove back into the meagre cover they found behind a rusted out school bus. He yanked the lever to rechamber a round, hoping he wouldn’t need another long range shot but preparing in any case.

At this point, he’d be tempted to flee back to the horses, but they were both tired and hungry and the distance of over a mile would give these guys plenty of opportunity to give chase and would likely lead them right to everything they had scraped together since leaving Idaho. Joel turned to Ellie and suggested she stay where she was and keep up the noise so he could flank their attackers with the bow. At least this way the other guys wouldn’t hear him coming and they would be able to recover most of the arrows if he was careful with them.

He crept to the far end of the bus and when Ellie popped out at the right hand edge moved across a narrow gap to hide behind a low wall leading him round to the left of the roadside battleground. The first two guys were paying too much attention to “that dumb redhead bitch” to notice Joel before arrows appeared in their throats. The third noticed him because he accidentally knocked over a can but it was too late and as he turned the arrow thunked into his chest.

Hunter number four was well covered, having positioned himself against a corner with Ellie at his eleven o’clock and Joel’s current approach at two o’clock. Joel moved round even further so that he would be coming in from almost behind this guy, grabbed him and broke his neck after a brief struggle. Now, Joel paused to look for number five. He had been a short, possibly teenaged boy, with sandy hair and, unexpectedly, glasses.

Joel heard the yelp at the same time he realised why he couldn’t see the boy. He stormed his way back to the school bus and rounded the corner to find two bloodstained figures on the floor. Guilt overwhelmed him. He knew Ellie was vulnerable and he had left her alone anyway. He lifted her into his arms, moaning an animal noise of mourning as he nuzzled his face against her hair, taking more of her scent before he had to leave her.

Immediately, he could hear Tommy off to his right telling him he couldn’t stay, that it wasn’t safe, that they needed to keep going before someone else arrived. And all he could do was cradle the tiny body in his arms and weep, begging her not to leave him. He could even feel Tommy coming up behind him, waiting for the repeat of his hand on his shoulder all over again.

“Babygirl, please. Please don’t leave me. Not again. Can’t go through this again baby.”

Hoarsely, Ellie croaked up at Joel. He almost dropped her in his shock.

“Joel, the blood isn’t mine.”

“Ellie?”

“Yeah. Guy fucking choked me pretty good. Guess you’re going to have that quiet life you’re always wishing for, at least for a few days.”

“You’re covered in blood.” Apparently all he could do right now was ask dumbass questions and state the obvious.

“Yeah, well, that’ll happen when you stick a knife into the throat of the guy trying to strangle you. Do you need me to strip off to prove it’s not mine?” she said, in a rough voice barely above a whisper.

“You’re alright?”

She nodded.

“God Ellie. Thought I’d lost you,” he said, voice cracking and breaking with emotion.

He buried his face in her hair and wept with relief. He gave tiny kisses to every blood-tasting piece of skin he could reach, as if each was an affirmation that she was still alive, until her bloodied hands reached for his chin and pulled him down into a long and slow kiss.

“Can you walk OK darlin’?”

“Yeah. Let’s scrape this place clean and get back to the horses.”

It took them far longer than usual. Joel insisted on her holding his hand or his belt for the entire search. He was often protective of her but even he had to recognise this was getting stupid. Yet somehow he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Her touch was somehow the only thing keeping him in touch with the real world.

*****

They got back to the abandoned shop they’d found the night before, opened the shutter and checked everything was as they had left it. He tugged on her hand to bring her with him as he climbed to the room above where they had slept the night before. Between them they sorted their haul into equipment, supplies and tradeable items. There was very little they didn’t think could be salvaged. Some ragged clothing was about all that made it onto the trash pile. They even kept the glasses from the boy who had tried to kill Ellie.

There was enough food to keep them going for a couple of weeks at least. He offered her a choice of MRE chicken or a can of chilli. She took the chicken to leave him his favourite. He sat close enough to her that his leg rested against hers and he could lay his hand on her thigh whenever he wasn’t using it. The adrenaline of the day had worn off and the week of low rations before it had worn them both out. While he wanted to celebrate her living by worshipping her body he felt himself falling asleep. When he stretched out on top of his sleeping bag he pulled her towards him with a big hand holding her stomach and feeling her breaths make it rise and fall.

That night Ellie woke to hear Joel whimpering in his sleep. She had known he had had nightmares before but he’d never sounded like this before. His face was wet with tears, and though she couldn’t tell what he was saying it was clear that he was heartbroken. She put her hand gently onto his chest and shook him awake. He growled loudly, coming awake in a furious rush like usual, like a diver resurfacing in a boiling rush from a high dive. His wild eyes scanned around for any threat. When they landed on Ellie it took a beat before he recognised her. When he did he surged upwards from where he lay on his back, grabbing her and crushing her against his chest.

“Oh, thank God,” he murmured while he touched his lips to her hair over and over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus chapter this week. Back again on Tuesday. Story now complete at 18 chapters, just polishing and rearranging and things.


	10. The Farmstead: Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroic pair reach a mysterious farmstead.

The Pacific lay before them, rushing toward and sucking away from the pale sands of the beach. The trek through Idaho and Oregon had been worth it to see her face. He’d struck off another of his bucket list in barely a few weeks and now he was even thinking of adding others. After the gas station Joel had first been terrified that he had knocked Ellie up for no reason, but after nearly losing her he was starting to hope she might be filled with his baby.

She plunked her butt down into the sand to wrench off her boots and socks before shoving her jeans down and taking off to the sea, pale legs taunting him in the sunshine. She sprinted into the waves, and was almost immediately knocked down in the surf. As she sprang back to her feet the thin shirt she was wearing plastered itself to her chest.

Joel shook his head to clear it, knowing that fantasies could be marvellous dangerous things, and headed off down the beach after her, shedding his shirt, pants and boots as he went. The water was freezing as he waded toward her. He was glad she had stayed in the shallows, with water barely up to his mid-thigh because otherwise he would have to explain shrinkage and the idea brought back the memory of their trip to the sex shop. So many potential questions thankfully avoided. He splashed toward her, smiling at the grin on her face.

“I’ve never been in the sea before.”

“What? You lived in Boston!”

“Yeah, but you know as well as I do that only fishermen are allowed out of the zone to the coast. I’ve seen the sea loads of times, just never been on a beach before.”

Joel grinned at her, and playfully splashed water at her. Ellie squealed and fled from him up the deserted beach. He chased after her, laughing and when he caught up to her he tugged her into his arms, their momentum tumbling them onto the sand, her slight frame above his. He reached up for her, lifting his head toward her laughing face and kissed her the way he had been missing. They’d been somewhat subdued when she had nearly died, and he was done with hiding how he felt about her from anyone, Ellie damn well included.

Then, gloriously, she gasped into his mouth, her lips pressed to his and the tip of her tongue stroked over his. They kissed for what could’ve been minutes, could’ve been long enough for Rome to fall, crumble to dust and be reborn. He stopped her when her hips started to move against his. Sex on the beach sounds great but it rarely works out in practice.

“C’mon darlin’,” Joel said, as he motioned for her to let him up.

“But, Joel,” she ground against his hard-on. “Don’t you want to?”

“Oh, I want to. I just don’t want sand in my ass-crack.”

“Oh, right.” She rose and let him up. They started back towards the horses. “Hey, Joel. Why was the sand wet?”

“Ellie,” he sighed in anticipation of a truly heinous joke.

“Because the sea weed.” She giggled, and as Joel so often found these days, he couldn’t suppress a smile.

From the beach he could see a farmhouse with animals in the surrounding fields. While they would be taking a chance on the place, it seemed like they might be able to trade some of the things they were carrying or their skills and time to be able to get fresh food. While he wanted to tumble Ellie into the sand again and show her just how much he wanted to, the idea of fresh meat was so alluring he couldn’t help but want to head to the farmstead with all speed. He was running out of holes on his belt.

*****

Joel had held out little hope for a warm welcome when he approached the isolated farmhouse. It had obvious signs of livestock in the nearby fields and a number of smaller fields given over to crops and closest to the house itself a market garden with both culinary and medicinal herbs alongside the traditional food crops. Whoever lived here knew what they were doing. He approached carefully, with his hands out wide to his sides to show he wasn’t a threat.

“Hello? We’re lookin’ to trade. Got goods and information if you’re interested.”

He continued towards what was becoming a suspiciously quiet farmhouse. It was too close to the little town they had just left to be hunters, but silence is never good. He hoped it wouldn’t be like that time in North Carolina, while he was still on his way to Boston, when some animal had chopped up seven people, even the kids and left them on the floor of the house to rot.

Joel crept to the barns and outbuildings first, and found fodder harvested for the winter, a marmalade cat nursing kittens the size of his thumb and an assortment of old, new, broken and half-scavenged machinery in various stages of rust.

Signalling Ellie to move up from where they’d hidden Horse and Callous from view, he waited for her to get into cover again before advancing on the farmhouse. He was taking a chance going in shotgun first. If there were people inside and they saw the gun they’d shoot first and ask questions later. But if there was a runner, or worse, he would need the gun.

He pulled open the screen door, and then tried the front door. People in these types of places used to leave their doors unlocked but nobody does that any more. Not if they want to live. He was surprised at the click of the latch releasing and the door opening with ease. Two ripped apart runners where just inside the front hallway. He'd heard of this before, if a clicker got hungry enough and there were still runners around. A clicker must have got in and turned the other two, and then eaten them when it got too hungry. The farm had looked secure, so it had to be in here somewhere. And it knew they were there.

He closed the door and returned to Ellie’s cover spot. They would need to clear room by room to have a chance at avoiding an ambush and he needed her to cover him. He handed her the short shotgun and outlined what he knew about the house.

“We are goin’ to have to handle this place room by room. I’ll go left and low, need you to keep me covered. There’s definitely a clicker inside. I couldn’t hear it at the door but it ate two runners inside in the last three days.”

“OK, ready when you are Joel.”

He smiled at her, proud of the fighter she had grown into. He pushed down the twinge of guilt that told him she wouldn’t need to be a fighter but for him. Somehow he failed to realise that if he hadn’t taken Ellie on then someone else would have. Perhaps someone with fewer skills, less talent for survival. If it weren’t for him teaching her how to fight she could be dead by now and he would still be in Boston, still wallowing in his misery.

*****

Joel and Ellie cleared the house room by room. The ground floor was clear so he carefully led them up the stairs, taking the chance that the clicker had gotten itself stuck in a bedroom in preference over entering a dark and enclosed space like the basement. He eventually found it, raging at the fluttering of a shower curtain in the light breeze coming through an open window. Rather than waste ammunition which was currently at a premium, he stunned the creature with a glass bottle of scented bath salts and beat it to death with the type of weapon Ellie called a Joel Special: a collection of scissor blades taped to an aluminium baseball bat he’d taken from one of the hunters that tried to kill Ellie.

“OK, I think we’re clear, but there could be another one. I want to carry on and clear the house.”

Ellie nodded and gestured for him to lead the way. They searched the rest of the top floor, clearing bedrooms and bathrooms before arriving back at the top of the stairs and underneath a loft hatch with a dangling cord.

Joel gingerly tugged the cord and stepped aside, but the action was smooth and the stairs slid down nearly silently. He tossed a plastic bottle into the far corner of the loft space to check that it was empty and then slowly went up the stairs in case of a smarter ambusher. Nothing was alive, but this space looked like a panic room. There was food, a bed, and stuff to read, even a couple of board games. It was a shame that whoever the runners downstairs had been hadn’t made it up here. They would probably still be alive.

“Just stay there a second, I want to check somethin’”

He went all the way up the stairs, pulled them back into place and there it was. A huge steel bar that formed the basis of a locking mechanism. Nobody would be following them up here if he pulled the lever that would drop it in and prevent the stairs from moving. He went back to Ellie and they went downstairs together to clear the basement.

When they got there, both their mouths dropped open. Not only was it clear, it was also completely stuffed with supplies. It had racks on all four walls and back to back up the middle. It was like walking into a crowded bodega in New York, with barely enough room to pass between the shelves. They had everything from clean clothing to salt, to gun oil, seeds for the farm and garden, fertilizer for plants, or if necessary explosives. There was a locked gun case under the window and above it a shelf half groaning with books. Unlike the books in the house above them, which were mostly fiction for adults and children, these were instructive manuals for the farmstead, from the wind-turbines and solar thermal plant on the building to husbandry records for the various animals. There was finally a “How to Run Hope Farmstead” book, densely handwritten, which Ellie plucked off the shelf and with a quick glance at Joel settled to read.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as an FYI: I'm currently recovering from an infection which seems to mostly involve lying flat under my AC unit and moaning. This wouldn't be a problem for you guys if I wasn't currently supposed to be writing the chapter for two chapters from this one. I have two weeks to get it sorted but at the moment I'm not making progress. If that is going to be a problem I will let you know. Worst comes to the worst I'll figure out how to move the unwritten chapter or cut it altogether. Other than that, the rest of the story is basically complete, just needs to be reread. See you all next week!


	11. The Farmstead: Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel cleans up after himself.

Joel went back up the stairs and searched all three bodies. The runners gave up nothing much, though in the detritus the clicker had cast aside in its haste to reach the flesh beneath, he found a zippo lighter, full of gas, a pocket knife he could probably trade, a pair of glasses still in the case, and a bunch of keys. One of them had “Liberty” inscribed on it and looked like it might match the grey bulk of the gun safe in the basement. The clicker, by contrast, had nothing of any value. Not even something to identify him, although that wasn’t that unusual for people living outside the zones. Joel had given up his own driving licence years ago and the papers that said he had been living in Boston he had burned on Bill’s fire way back in Lincoln. Better to be thought a transient from elsewhere than an escapee.

He went to find a shovel and a wheelbarrow, removed all the bodies from the house, and with the minimum of cursing possible carted them to the field next to the one that formed the garden. It already had three crosses in it so it made sense to bury the new bodies here. With bears in the area he chose not to take any chances and wanted to make sure he dug deep enough. He had a vaguely remembered image of a nature program that said something that bears could smell more than eight feet below the ground but he was sceptical of his ability to safely dig that deep. He settled for four, with a mound at least two feet high and a covering of rocks. He figured it was the least he could do to thank them, even the killer clicker, for a place for him to live with Ellie. Local people might not like it but were unlikely to argue with such a well-armed and determined pair.

He walked back into the house from the gathering dusk to find Ellie serving up the last of the fish stew he had made the night before. It had been kept warm in the thermal jar they found at the gas station but it was still slightly suspect. Still, without breaking into the contents of the basement, and without a firm idea of where to start, he figured he would probably be ok.

“They knew something like this would happen,” Ellie said with a tightness in her voice.

“What?” Joel asked from his side of the table, voice slightly rough from an afternoon spent silent.

“The book, it said that the farm is free to the finder, provided the people who lived here, Mr and Mrs Tran, are dead. They asked that we mark their graves with these symbols. It says they’re traditional Vietnamese. They knew they were never going home. They came to America on holiday and never got to go home.”

Joel didn’t have anything to say that didn’t seem like an empty platitude about nobody being able to go home again. They ate some more in silence.

“You find out anythin’ else in that book?”

“Uh, yeah, it says there are goats and pigs out there that we need to take care of but the sheep and the chickens can manage for themselves, just need to collect the eggs and fetch the sheep down into the lower pastures in winter. Oh and we have beehives in the orchard and it mentions that cat you saw in here. Her name is Bumper.”

“You give her that name?” he asked, with a slight smile.

“No, they did and you can’t call her Cat.”

“Sure,” he smiled. “Sounds like a lot to learn.”

“Yeah, but those books down there will help. They keep a running list of repairs to be done as well; can I give that to you?”

“Tomorrow?” he yawned.­

“Course,” she said, putting the plates in the sink and grabbing Joel’s hand to head to their bedroom.

“Bed?” he asked, sleepily.

“Hold on, I have a surprise for you.”

“Aw, Ellie, I dunno, I think I’m too tired.”

“Joel! Not that kind of surprise,” she mock scolded, pretending shock. “Just, come here.”

She ushered him into the bathroom where she clicked on an LED lamp and turned on the shower. Joel stared open mouthed. Even back in Boston on the best of days the showers had been lukewarm at best. This thing was steaming and falling like a waterfall compared to the weak stream of the showers in the zone.

“Hot showers? What’s next with this place a sauna and a hot tub?”

As he stayed stock still Ellie began stripping him off, shoving his shirt over his head and unbuckling his belt to lower his pants. She shooed him towards the bath-tub with a hearty butt-slap. He found she had already set out soap, and his other bathroom gear lay on top of a fresh towel on a chair next to the tub.

“Don’t waste the water, get in.”

He struggled to swing his leg over the side of the tub after the effects of digging on his back but he was glad that he had. The hot water was like heaven on his skin, soothing his tired muscles after hours of shifting heavy objects and digging holes in the ground, and cleaning off the weeks of ground in grime that bathing in a bowl just couldn’t quite fix. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a shower as satisfying as this one. There had been times in Jackson where the shower had been an attractive recreational prospect, he remembered, when Ellie could hardly keep her hands off him. He thought, with a leer, that he wouldn’t mind that kind of attention right now but he was tired and she was already getting changed for bed. When he finished washing himself off with the goats’ milk and honey soap Ellie had left him, he dried himself off with the charcoal towel she had left him and slipped into the bedroom. He dropped the towel on the chair next to the bed and climbed in next to Ellie. He slid across to her, pulled her into his arms and pressed his face to her hair to kiss her before murmuring a sleepy goodnight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Joel, if only he had remembered correctly. The TV program he is remembering is about Polar Bears, which he's pretty unlikely to come across in Oregon. (I researched brown and black bears and from what I read he decides on overkill for preventing them digging up the Trans but it's the thought that counts, right?)


	12. The Farmstead: Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after Ellie and Joel arrive at Hope Farm.

Joel woke early the next morning feeling near enough stiff all over. He was often stiff in one or both of his legs in the mornings, but today everything from his shoulders down his arms and his back felt like it was on fire. His legs hadn’t decided to skip the party either. The hiss and moan he made when shifting from lying down to sitting on the edge of the bed woke Ellie.

“Joel?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Mmm, you OK?” she asked, shifting around in the bed as though hunting for him without opening her eyes. He liked her like this, all warm and soft and sleepy in the mornings. It made him remember their winter in Colorado and the time they spent in Jackson, when there had been plenty of opportunities for lazy mornings in bed together, and far less fear and flight and desperation. In spite of the pain, he was beginning to harden.

“Yeah darlin’, I’m just going to raid the medicine cabinet in the basement for some pain meds.”

“Oh, OK. You want any help?” she asked, stretching her tank-top covered upper body and shielding a yawn behind her forearm.

“No, it’s OK, You go back to sleep.”

He wished he felt supple enough to push her back into the bed and kiss her before he left. As it was, he brushed his fingers through her hair, then kissed their tips and brought them to her lips. He rose with a grunt and went for a piss before gingerly descending to the basement.

In a short period of time he’d located the locker given over to medical supplies. Inside was a bag like those carried by a medic in the military. It was brimming with emergency supplies, each stashed in a convenient pouch. Inside the cabinet there were also plenty of more mundane medical supplies. He grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen and another of a muscle relaxant, as well as a tube of muscle rub. He might be useless for the rest of the day, but he needed to rest anyway.

He put the bag away in the hall closet, before going into the kitchen and pouring a glass of water. He swallowed two reddish brown ibuprofen and started with just one of the white baclofen tablets, then refilled the glass. He started to wish he had put anything on last night as being pocketless now was a fresh pain in his ass, and managed to balance the glass, the tube of cream, and the two pill bottles while walking up the stairs.

He put everything on the nightstand, and climbed back into bed. Ellie nuzzled in against him and sighed into his chest hair in satisfaction. He managed to raise his head and kiss her temple, then laid it back when she rose over him, pressing her lips in tiny light kisses all over his face, which left him grinning in a rare full face smile. He caught her thigh and dragged her on top of him. His hands rested on her hip with his index finger in the crease where her buttock met her thigh.

Ellie ground herself against Joel’s pelvis, moaning into his mouth. Joel started to lift her shirt and pulled her upper body down to his mouth, kissing from her throat down to her breasts. He nuzzled into her skin, turning his head so he could ghost a breath over each of her nipples in turn, and pushed her shirt into her hands for her to finish removing. When both nipples were peaked he leaned upward to suck them into his mouth, winced at the pain in his back and drew her closer to him as he fell back. He sucked her left nipple into his mouth and flicked his tongue over her stiffening flesh. He switched sides and sucked the other in to hold it lightly between his teeth and suck hard enough that she squirmed in his arms and gasped.

“Turn over, I want you so your back is on my front.”

She moved so that she stretched out full length on his front, his cock trapped between her cheeks like the world’s happiest prisoner. Her legs started out on top of his but he lifted his knees to ease the strain in his back and slipped her legs outside of his to spread them wide. Her hands fell to the mattress beneath them, resting delicately against his sides.

He was remembering the first time he touched her this way, after his own fabulously poor showing of stamina when Ellie had hardly got her hand to his cock before it went off. When she had stripped off and sat between his legs and he had stroked at her until she cried out in pleasure. His hands reached between her legs at the reminiscence.

Whether she was thinking the same thing or otherwise was immaterial. Her knickers were soaked. His fingers slipped under the waistband to run a thick knuckle through her, and raised it to his mouth to suck clean. He grabbed at the front of her underwear and ripped the wash-thinned flimsy fabric off her body with a growl and a happy thrust from his pelvis.

“Joel! I liked that pair.”

“I’ll get you new ones,” he rasped against her throat, his beard hairs tickling and his breath teasing on her delicate skin.

His hand rested over her mound and he pulled the skin about, teasing her by dragging her wet skin against her clit. He knew the action drove her wild and it wasn’t long before her hips were pressing upward into his hand, begging for more contact. Joel spread her lips with two fingers and used his middle finger to stroke on each side of her clit, left on the up-stroke, right on the down until she whined. His other hand was busily filling itself with her breast. Her nipple stood pink and firm on her small and rounded tit. He grasped it between his knuckles of his index and middle fingers, and squeezed until she moaned. Then he pulled his fist away from her without letting go until she gasped and hissed out a breath. He dropped her nipple and swirled fingers outward around her breast in circles.

While he had her distracted with what he was doing to her chest he moved his hand round so that he could fill her with his fingers and stroke her clit with a thick and callused thumb. Each time he tweaked her nipple her pussy twitched against his fingers and fresh pulse of liquid rushed from her, down her buttocks and pooled against his cock. He stroked at her until his dick was uncomfortably wet, then shifted her  so he could guide her back to him and he could fill her in one sharp motion. He was already wet with her juices when she slipped him inside and her pussy was drenched and hot and open. She started to ride him mindlessly and while he wanted to see what the feel of his cock inside was doing to her by the look on her face he loved watching himself disappear between her buttocks.

“God, Joel, you feel so good.”

Joel thrust against her at her breathy moan and struggled not to wince at the pain in his lower back. When he thrust harder he really did wince and on the third stroke he cried out in sudden agony.

“What’s wrong Joel?” she asked, as she slid off his cock and turned to check he was OK.

“My back, it’s still sore from yesterday.”

“You want to stop?”

“Do you?” he asked, with strain in his voice and a pulsing erection sitting on his stomach.

“Only if you do,” she said, reaching for his swollen and shiny-wet dick. She climbed back on top as she had been before, hands braced on his knees facing his feet. Joel gasped at the feeling of her sliding back onto his cock, impaling herself until her pelvic bone was resting on his.

Joel lifted his hands to grab handfuls of her taut ass and stroke over the luscious curves of his lover’s body. Ellie ground on his body and rose and fell, then circled her hips, repeating over and over, steadily driving them both wild. When he could take it no longer, he reached a hand over her hip and rubbed maddening circles on her clit until she pulsed on him. As she came he had to shove her off him because he was so close to coming himself that he was worried about coming in her. She laughed as she bounced on the mattress and he took himself in hand to slickly stroke out his own orgasm, painting his belly white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the end it turned out I had always had an extra chapter between us and the chapter I wasn't happy with. I am both a lot happier and a lot healthier at the moment and we should continue on target next week. Thanks for the well wishes over the last couple of weeks: they've meant a great deal. We are entering the last part of the story now, so I hope it continues to please.


	13. The Farmstead: Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel is injured. We meet a new character.

Joel was floating in pain, merging in and out of consciousness. It was such a dumb, domestic way to get hurt after the years of fending off runners, hunters and worse. He had been up on the roof of the goat-barn retarring it to waterproof it against another season of rain, burner in hand when the ladder strut he was standing on gave way and he fell. He hadn’t been concentrating. He had been thinking about last night. When he’d come to bed and found Ellie curled around the period bottle and weeping. She thought that somehow she had let him down, as if the vagaries of her uterus were her own fault. They had sat together for a long time and talked about the way conception was such an unlikely event. He’d talked about how he could see them having a child here in the future.

He admitted to himself that there was a part of him that deeply regretted being unable to hold a tiny life that is a little of him and a lot of her in his palms. He didn’t want to talk about how a part of him felt relieved. He knew that having a kid would mean that someone has a gun to his head for the rest of his life. He couldn’t stop thinking about how inescapably vulnerable it would leave him feeling. How he wouldn’t ever be able to assess a situation in the same way again. He wasn’t ready for it yet. But he could be, given time to remember all of the beautiful parts of being a father.

*****

Ellie heard a loud crash and went looking to see what the source of the noise was. When she reached the door she couldn’t see Joel and the ladder he had set against the goat-barn minutes before was also gone. She walked across the yard to look for him and when she saw the crumpled heap that was her lover she sprinted the remaining distance with her heart in her mouth. She got to him and kicked away the blowtorch that was still burning near his hand. 

She grabbed a tarpaulin from the shed and rolled Joel onto it carefully, as she would have if she had changed a bed-bound patient’s sheets. He yelled loudly when she moved his legs, and moaned a deep sound that sounded barely human when she had to put his hands onto his chest. She winced for him, but paused only for a second before dragging him to the house. She looked at the steps into the building and decided to drag him along a little further to take him in through the front door. It was a longer journey but there was only one step into the house, not three.

Considering he was somewhat alert and certainly had screamed when Ellie moved him, she figured he didn’t have a serious head injury, but his ankle was seriously swollen and could be broken. And his hands. Both of his perfect, sexy hands; hands that made her shudder, shiver, pant, beg and scream. They were going to be a problem.

She offered prayers of thanks to any relevant, attentive deity that she had been forced to work in the medical centre at Two Pines. She’d learned some first aid and medical treatment at the military school, and topped that up with first-hand experience with screaming, bloodied, men and women with injuries that that could include burns, wounds needing stiches and broken bones. All of these, and Joel’s injuries, could be treated with the right equipment and a few medical supplies.

She wrestled him on the sofa in the main living area and ran to the supply cupboard in the hallway to pick up the medical gear stashed there. She could feel the panic trying to rise in her craw, her throat narrowing until she could barely wheeze a breath, and she had to fight to stay present, to fix this problem rather than rehashing old ones, or imagining a future where she was trying to put Joel’s head back together after the ruin of a gunshot.

She took three long deep breaths, and then forced herself to get on with it. Touching Joel helped, his body hot and real, delicate, vulnerable and in need of her help kept her anchored in the real world, safely away from the joint demons of memory and imagination.

She stopped bleeding, cleaned wounds, and set and splinted the broken bones in his left hand. She dressed burns to the fingers of his right hand which mercifully had no broken bones. She gave pain relief and administered anti-biotics, before cleaning his skin with an antiseptic tincture from the Eucalyptus trees in the garden. She cut off his clothes, leaving only his boxers to help keep him cool in case of infection, and covered him with a blanket.

Ellie stepped away, surveying her work. Joel was she was pretty sure, asleep. He had a minor wound on his forehead, but the rest of his skull seemed normal. He had grunted at her when she shone a light into his eyes and checked his pupils, which seemed normal, but she hadn’t much experience with this method of diagnosis, it was just something she picked up from the doctors.  She let him rest, sank to the floor next to him on the couch, pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed the stress away.

*****

Awareness came back to Joel slowly. First, he could feel nothing but pain. Felt like all he could remember was pain, unending, endured since the dawn of time. That thought made him want to smirk. Endure and survive, reminded him of someone, someone pretty, and in spite of the pain the corner of his lip twitched. He could feel himself coming awake now. The pain was still bad, but it was localising itself into various areas. He could tell the difference between his broken hand and the bruising up his left flank. He struggled, fought valiantly and won the battle to open his eyes.

Ellie was by his side in an instant.

“Hey, you back with us this time?”

Joel croaked at her, his throat too dry to speak. She brought him a glass of water and helped him to drink.

“Better?”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like I’d have to get better to die.”

Ellie’s face paled and if he could have moved he would kick himself for forgetting she was still terrified of losing him after everything that had happened since Jackson.

“Aw, babygirl, I din’t mean it like that. C’mere,” he gestured with his bandaged hands and looked at them like he had never seen either hands or bandages before.

“What in the hell happened to me?”

Ellie sat next to him and pulled his broken hand around her.

“You fell off the roof of the goat-barn two days ago. Broke your hand pretty bad, but it’s all splinted and wired together and should be OK. You’ve got some pretty fucking serious blisters on your other hand where you burned it. Been watching them like a hawk for infection.”

“Shit…”

“I’m not done. I’m pretty sure your ankle is only sprained, which is good because we would need at least one extra pair of hands to help set it. You’ll probably need to use a stick to help you get around for a few weeks. You bashed your head, gave yourself a concussion. You’ve been totally out of it for the last couple of days.”

“Fuck.”

“Fucking right. You got fucking lucky Joel. You can’t be doing shit like this to me and freaking me out.”

“I’m sorry babygirl. Really, darlin’, I’m sorry you were scared, and I’m sorry for leavin’ you alone.”

She brushed a tear from her eyes and turned to press her lips on his. When she pulled away he raised the tips of his broken fingers to his mouth and smiled. She thought she could still detect some of the goofiness of the last few days, a combination of the concussion and pain meds.

“You need anything?”

“Uh, yeah, actually. I, uh, I need you to help me to the, uh, the outhouse.”

“You need to pee? I can handle that here,” she said, reaching down next to the bed and picked up a bottle.

“Ellie…” Joel looked a little horrified. But he also had to pee and he didn’t trust himself trying to get to the porch, let alone down the steps to the yard and across it to the outhouse. He tried to grab the bottle with his bandaged hands and clearly couldn’t manage. He was both frustrated and shame ridden for being unable to take care of himself.

“Joel it’s OK, let me take care of this for you,” Ellie said as she took the bottle from him, eased the blankets aside, and reached into his boxers. She efficiently took his cock, lined him up with the wide-necked bottle, and held him at the opening. “OK, go whenever you’re ready.”

Joel fervently wished he wasn’t here. He recalled the cave from the film “Fight Club” from years and years ago. He desperately wished that at some point in the intervening 30 or more years he’d bothered to cultivate his own. Perhaps a quick tap of his head on the arm of the couch would erase the memory for him. But it’s too late, the urge to piss had taken over and his body was already voiding his bladder with Ellie’s small and cool hand wrapped round his dick.

When he finished she removed the bottle and swung out the door to get rid of it. He might have been mortified, but she was business-like about it. She came back and gave him some more medication for the pain he’d been pretending he wasn’t suffering. He started to fall asleep as the opiates fogged his brain and lifted him away on a cloud.

 *****

When Joel had been laid up with a less than secure hold on reality, a dark haired, blue-eyed young man had shown up at the farm. He was wearing a greenish pair of pants tightened around his waist with an old, worn leather belt. There was a hole the size of a pencil in his left pant leg. His narrow and long upper body was swathed in an over-large navy blue woollen sweater with a v neck opening that was held closed against the early morning chill with a large button. There was an obvious knife on his belt and he had a medium sized pack on his shoulders.

Being as it was a dangerous time to be alive Ellie grabbed Joel’s shotgun and stood out on the front porch to meet him. He came into the front yard, about 6 feet tall and handsome enough for a guy still gangly with youth.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?” Ellie asked, hoping she sounded tough and not shrill and hysterical.

“My name’s Kale, ma’am. Kale Moser,” the young man said, hands in the air.

“What do you want, Kale?”

“I came here to trade with Mr and Mrs Tran. They’d give me stuff from the farm to sell in town and I’d bring them things they need or give them hours of work on the farm in return. Can I put my hands down yet?”

“Are you armed?”

“What kind of question is that? Who goes about unarmed anywhere these days and lives to tell?”

“Then, no, you can’t put your hands down.”

“Look, Miss, uh, I didn’t get your name. I’m not looking to cause any problems. If you don’t have anything you want to trade then I’ll be heading on.”

Ellie thought about it for a while. The book had said something about regular traders in the area but hadn’t mentioned any of them by name. On the other hand, the man clearly knew the people who had lived here before by name. There was also a crate near the entrance of the basement labelled “For Trading”.

“Um, there are some fences that need mending, a bunch of other little jobs too. Probably a full day of work, maybe two. How much?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I asked my husband if he thinks there might be babies born in the last few years in Oregon called Kale. He immediately answered "Probably, I mean, Portland." We both loved Portland when we went there on our honeymoon, but the place has a well-deserved reputation for weirdness. I'd be shocked if there weren't kids there called Kale. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy the chapter. I ended up cutting the one I was having trouble with. It talked in a lot more detail about Joel's struggle to reconcile the fear he felt about becoming a dad again against his desire to have a family with Ellie. I couldn't get it to a point where I felt happy with it and I didn't think it added more to the story than the first couple of paragraphs of this chapter so it had to go. At the end of the day all it served to do was add a little more angst and explain how Joel was distracted enough to fall off the roof and I hope that the reasons for that are equally clear in this chapter.


	14. The Farmstead: Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel has been through the wars. Ellie treats him to some loving care.

Joel had been suffering a low grade fever after one of his burns had gotten slightly infected. He wasn’t delirious and the antibiotics from the basement were helping to make him well. Now he just needed time and rest. Neither thing something he was used to taking. They’d gotten him up the stairs the night before in a lucid period between pain doses. It might not have been the smartest move but if Ellie hadn’t helped he had been talking about doing it by himself and the last thing she needed was him ruining the set of his fingers or fracturing something which was currently intact. He’d gotten up each stair painfully slowly and had spent the entire time trying not to think about how it could be when he got older and slower. He hoped the day wouldn’t come where that slowness was the difference between him living and not, but knew that was a risk he might have to bear.

He woke the morning after he had fully regained consciousness stiff, sore and in need of a piss. He looked longingly at the bathroom door, wishing he could get to it. The illness had left him weak as well as in pain. Even if he could make it to the bathroom, the thick bandages on his hands would mean he couldn’t open the damn door. He looked round for Ellie. She appeared, suddenly, as if his thoughts had summoned her.

“You need to go?”

“Yes please,” he said, humiliated.

Her hands were business-like and efficient and his bladder was soon empty. She removed and emptied the bottle. He heard her washing her hands up and then the sound of more water being run. Ellie came back into the bathroom with two large buckets of steaming water, soap, and a stack of towels.

“Ellie,” Joel said, with a tone of warning. His voice was doing the backing up his body couldn’t.

“Yes Joel?” Ellie asked brightly.

“What you got there, Ellie?”

“I’m giving you a bath Joel. I kept you as clean as I could while you were out of it but you need a proper wash.”

“I ain’t sure ‘bout this.”

“You’ll feel better, I promise.” She noticed Joel looking unconvinced. “Joel, I’ve done this before.”

“What? When?”

“Joel, what the fuck do you think I did while I was a nurse?” she laughed, before starting to put towels around the top of the bed and over his pillow.

She carried on in spite of his token protests. When she grabbed the cup and gently poured water over his hair to wash it he moaned.

“You OK? Water not too hot?”

“No, it’s good. I, uh, always liked havin’ my hair washed.”

Ellie worked the last remaining sliver of his soap into a lather in her hands and stroked her hands through his dark and silvering hair to lather his scalp. She started at his temples, worked her way upward to the top of his head and then round to the back. Once there was clean smelling woody scented lather in his hair she began to rub his head in something like a head massage. She dug her fingers deep into the muscles at the back of his neck and Joel let out a pleasured grunt. When she started working her hands down from the top of his head to his ears he let out a happy sigh. Ellie rinsed his head clean with another cup of water, before carefully drying him off.

“Feel better?”

“Yes ma’am.” Joel replied, hoping she wouldn’t notice just how much he had enjoyed the intimate moment by looking down at the sizeable distortion in the front of his sheets. Almost 50 he may be, but even laid up with injury he was still hard enough to knock nails.

“Want me to do the rest?”

He nodded in response. Ellie removed the wet towels, washed his face and gave him another massage as she cleaned his beard. She held the toothbrush and cleaned his teeth, then put a towel under his head and tugged it down until it covered the bed from his shoulders to hips. Then she carefully unwound the bandages from his burnt right hand.

“You ready?”

“Yeah,” he breathed.

She took the cloth, soaped it and gently ran the rag over his fingers, the back and then the palm of his sore hand. He winced, trying to be stoic and failing, at the intensity of the pain in his hand.

“OK?”

“Uh huh, keep goin’.”

She rinsed his hand and kept on going up his arm, before repeating the process on the left, without removing the brace that was splinting his hand. Ellie dropped the cloth into the bucket, soaped up her hands and stroked her fingers across his bruised and hair covered chest. The lather clung to the fuzz and the wetness made his brownish nipples harden. Ellie followed her hands with the cloth to clean him off and then dried him with a towel.

When she went to pull back the sheet from his leg, his hand shot down to cover his groin.

“Joel, I’m just trying to do your legs.”

She lifted the fabric from around his sore right ankle and folded the sheet away from his leg. He sat up slightly so she could pull the towel out from underneath him and replaced it under his leg. She soaped up her hands again, picked up his large foot by the heel and tickled her way over the sole. Joel fought the urge to giggle.

“You ticklish, Mr Miller?”

“Uh, yes Nurse Ellie,” he answered, mentally scolding himself for picturing Ellie in a frankly pornographic nurse’s outfit.

“How did I not know that about you?”

“It hasn’t ever come up.”

“I guess. I won’t take advantage of that fact. Not until you’re better at least.”

When she had finished washing each of his legs she reached for his shoulder and helped him to turn onto his side so she could wash his back. It took her longer to get started here, as she took a moment to savour his ass. Her head tilted at the sight of one of her favourite body parts. At least, one the parts of his body she liked most.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um, nothing,” she said, aiming for casual but with altogether too much squeak in her voice to hit it.

When her hands cupped at his ass like they had when she washed him at the gas station he grunted. He was getting hard again, in part at the sensation of her touch and in part at memories and fantasies of where this might end up. It was his turn to squeak, indignantly, when Ellie lifted his upper buttock and wiped down between them.

“Goddamn it Ellie, you could give a guy some warnin’.”

“Sorry Joel,” she said in a voice that was both clearly not sorry at all and also highly amused. “Can you roll onto your back; I need to finish you off.”

Joel tried not to twitch at the image she was conjuring for him and obeyed her request. He tried not to think about how being obedient was working for him. He’d always pictured it being Ellie obeying him. When Ellie yanked the sheet away from his groin his cock sprang free and was standing proud. Ellie started stroking him like she was trying to get him off but he squirmed away.

“Ellie, I’m OK. I don’t need for you to do that today. It’s just that it was just after you woke me up and we haven’t had a damn good chance to touch each other like this in a damn long time.” Ellie wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Ellie, darlin’ it’s fine. All I need right now is for you to get back into this bed and tell me everything that’s been happenin’ the last few days.”

Ellie went to get rid of the wet towels and dirty water. When she came back into the room she hopped into bed and pumped lotion into her hand from the bottle on her nightstand.

“This next,” she said, turning to Joel.

“Really?”

“Uh huh. It’s Basil and Lemon. Smell,” she said, putting a hand up to his nose. Joel sniffed at it half-heartedly.

“It does smell good,” he admitted begrudgingly.

Her fingers glided across his skin silky with lotion. He hummed deeply, satisfied with the cleaning of his skin and hair and the way Ellie had focussed her attention on him alone. When she started telling him about how things had been the last couple of days he fought to stay awake but lost. She curled in against him, holding him close.  She’d never tell him but she had been terrified he might not wake up himself, that he might not remember her. That he might not remember how important he was to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one occurred to me at the same time that I was writing the earlier washing scene. To me the two were quite different: one teasing and the other comforting. Ellie perhaps hasn't quite gotten the message that not every erection needs to be used in anger but that's probably fair since Joel gets up earlier than her most of the time so most erections she sees are about to be wielded that way. 
> 
> Sorry it's a bit later in the day this week than usual, catch you all next week.


	15. The Farmstead: Part Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie persuades Joel to let Kale stay.

When Ellie had left him, he’d been in their bed under just the sheet and wearing nothing following the sponge bath she had given him every morning after the injury. She had gone out to collect water and feed for the horses and manage the other farm animals. She skipped off her shoes at the porch door and stripped off the long sleeve shirt she uses to keep the sun off. There had been 20 year old sun screen in the collection of items in the house but it had gone clumpy and dried out. She stopped in the kitchen to refill the pitcher she used in the bedroom and walked up the stairs to check on Joel. She stopped in the doorway with a gasp.

He was asleep and had kicked off the sheets. He was glorious. The light coming through the sheer curtains over the window was making his slightly damp skin glisten. He was lying on his back, his ankle still up on a pillow and the other leg, nearest to Ellie, was bent at a right-angle, drawn up and giving her a much clearer view than if it had been straight. He had one hand on his chest as if it was stroking through the hair there and the other looked as if it was reaching for her. And there, on his stomach, was a huge and solid erection. He looked wanton and she was reminded of the touch of his skin on her while they played on the beach, of the way they played together the morning after they found this place, barely a week ago. As she sat on the edge of the bed he woke and the outstretched hand reached for her as he smiled.

“Hey,” he rasped.

“You thirsty?”

“Uh,” he cleared his throat. “Want you more than a drink.”

Ellie reached a hand to his forehead and found his fever had gone down. She poured him a glass of water and helped him to drink it before putting everything down on the nightstand and sliding closer to him in the bed.

He wanted to pull her closer, but the damn bandages and his broken fingers put paid to that. She seemed to sense his discomfort and came close enough that a large swathe of her body was pressed to his less bruised right side. Her hand moved to pet his chest, stroking through the hair while she brushed her lips against his temple. He turned his head toward her wanting press his lips to her mouth. For the last several days he had been cared for by her, having the dignity of health robbed from him and now he wanted intimacy with her. He wanted to feel needed by her.  He wanted to feel her wanting him.

Her lips met his, soft and gentle and nothing like the fierce kiss he was hoping for. He kissed her back, pressing hard, pushing his tongue between her teeth and gratified by her gasp into his mouth.

“Ellie, please,” he moaned, pressing his hips against hers.

She broke off their kiss and pushed herself down his body. His cock stood hard against his stomach and her fingers were reaching that too much-not enough level of stimulation. Her breath gusted over his thighs and ruffled his hair. He wanted to squirm, wanted to grab her, flip her over, fill her with his come. He held still and waited for her to take him in. Her mouth slipped over him and he moaned, keeping his hips still with only the greatest of effort. He wanted to choke her with his cock, feel her throat grasping at him, her body screaming for air. He needed her now, to wipe away the darkness straining to get out and even while he imagined defiling her he wanted more. As he shuddered into her mouth he realised he wanted the post-apocalyptic equivalent of picket fences, two kids and a dog. And he wanted the whole boring scene with her. Boring would suit him just fine.

His breathing slowed, and he returned to focus to find a flushed Ellie on his chest, looking deliciously dishevelled.

“I want to do you.”

“Joel, you can’t. You can’t lie down on your front, let alone lie down between my legs, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Despite the obvious arousal on his face, she was filled with concern for him.

“Take off your pants, and then come here darlin’.”

He persuaded her to sit with her ass at the top of his chest. She giggled at the feeling of his breaths chilling her hot, wet slit. Clumsily, with his bandaged hands he pulled her forward and down onto his face. He wrapped his tongue softly around her clit, and then sucked on her while he flicked his tongue over her until she was rocking her hips over him.

*****

“Dammit Ellie. No! We ain’t settin’ up a goddamn home for all the damn waifs and strays.” He paused for a second and then looked back at her with a face that was more furious than any he had ever turned on her. “Is that why you did it? Did you fuckin’ well suck me off so that I would be more likely to say yes?”

He hobbled towards her, and while that would make most men look less threatening, all Ellie could focus on was his rage filled expression. His lips curled back from his teeth and he was snarling as he advanced on her. Ellie had been afraid of men before now but right now was the first time she had known that she was completely vulnerable. Up until now Joel could be relied upon to protect her, with his body if necessary; nobody would protect her from him. She hurriedly backed away from him and raised her hands in supplication.

“No, Joel, God no. I just think it’s a good idea, you aren’t going to be on your feet for a while and he’s not a bad guy,” she said, attempting to assuage his anger.

“Not a bad guy, huh?” he snorted, his faced contorted and his tone ugly. “If he ain’t so bad, how come you ain’t off suckin’ his dick.”

There was a moment right after he said it that through the anger he realised what he had done. Not only had he accused his partner of wanting to cheat on him, he’d used a line from an argument with his ex-wife to do it. Ellie looked like she would have been less shocked if he had slapped her. Somehow he would have to pull this back.

“Ellie, I…” he mumbled, suddenly far less furious and scrubbing his palm down his sweaty face. When had he started sweating?

“Fuck off Joel,” she said, taking her turn at being angry. Before she let things get out of hand, she decided on a third option. She elected to reign in her anger to move the situation on. “We can snipe at each other all night but that isn’t going to get us any-fucking-where.”

Ellie glared at a visibly repentant Joel, then out the window at the porch where Kale was sitting on the step and watching the rain falling into the yard.

“Joel, look, you’re still hobbling around. He fixed the roof, and all the fences and you don’t want to let him sleep in the barn with the cat? I get that you aren’t Mr Trusting but you need to try to get over it a little bit.”

Joel growled, grabbed his stick and disappeared through the door.

“Kid? I sleep with my shotgun and I’m itchin’ to fuck someone up. Go sleep in the barn and if I see even a peep out of there before sun-up I’ll shoot you.” He trailed off, heading back to the house and mumbling “I need to check if that store has any landmines.”

The performance was mostly for Kale’s benefit. Joel was fairly confident that the youth wasn’t a threat given how he’d failed to take advantage of Ellie, but there was a part of him that wanted to stomp around acting the alpha male. He still felt guilty that she had not only been left taking care of him but had also had to assess a threat to them both. Any new male in her life made him uneasy, and it wasn’t her fault. He’d seen what other men had tried to do to her, whether it was kill or rape and he wasn’t about to lose another person he loved to the hands of another man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, sorry the update is a day late. I spent a totally not at all fun day yesterday hiding from my responsibilities with a handfull of cold and flu remedies and a blanket over my head. I'm pulling together the last chapter literally right after I finish typing this note up so if I am happy with it that can also go up today.
> 
> Joel muttering about land-mines made me laugh. And then sent me down a rabbit hole of how you might be able to Macgyver a land mine. My engineering degree is sometimes a little too useful.


	16. Now What?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel finds something out.

Joel and Kale had been out finishing up the late season planting and had come back to the yard to eat. He had rushed into the house straight away to check on Ellie. They’d made up after the massive faux pas he had made. At some point he would have to stop fighting his demons in Ellie. He didn’t expect that she would continue to put up with it for long.

He found her in front of the stove, stirring at some sort of stew. He smirked at the way her tiny shorts corrupted such a domestic scene into something that almost belonged in a skin magazine, and came up behind her. His arms wrapped around her middle and he pulled her against his body, that tight ass against his crotch which was beginning to wake up in a big way. She hadn’t been so conducive to pleasuring him over the last couple of weeks, for all that he had gotten some this morning. He knew he deserved it. In a lot of ways he didn’t fault her for it either since he had only just gotten back to fighting fit. He was just heading down the rabbit hole of fantasy when she stepped away.

“Later, Joel. Go get Kale for dinner,” she said, kissing his cheek.

Later certainly had promise and he tried not to think on it too fondly. He didn’t need the kid seeing him in the state Ellie got him in.  He pushed open the screen door and went looking in the yard for him.

The kid stood with his head under the pump, water gushing over his black, close-cropped hair and shirtless shoulders. Joel couldn’t blame him. It had been hot when Joel had woken up this morning, his leg and the side of his chest glued to Ellie. He smiled at the memory of pulling away from her and her moaning in protest. She had remained unsatisfied until he rolled her beneath him and slid inside of her to make slow sweaty love to her and lie afterwards in a sticky pile being cooled by the breeze coming in through the open windows.

He turned his mind back to the present when the kid straightened up and did a quarter turn. Joel’s heart pumped so fast he worried he was having a heart attack. The kid was wearing a firefly insignia around his neck. Joel kept reminding himself the safest thing to do was to act as if he had no idea what he was seeing. He fought against the urge to hide, to pretend he isn’t here, isn’t interesting. Did Marlene send the kid? Does she know where they are?

*****

“I know who she is.”

The words rang in Joel’s brain. Kale knew who Ellie was. He would tell people that she was some kind of Messiah, or else, some kind of witch. Either way they would have to leave the perfect farmstead that they had found, fixed up and gotten used to. The first good place where they could live by themselves and not bother anyone else.

“I know who she is.”

Five simple words that carried so much weight. He wasn’t sure why the boy was telling him. What was he supposed to do with this information?

“I know who she is.”

He’d gone out to the river with the boy to fish in the spirit of male-bonding. He’d found out the kid was a firefly a few days ago and had wanted to ask him about it when Ellie wasn’t around.

“Who have you told?”

Joel hadn’t planned for this. He’d prepared for fishing. He and Kale had just built a smoker at Hope and he was thinking of filling it with salmon to have a valuable source of protein for the winter and another source of income.

Now he was sitting opposite the boy who was bound with the belt from his khakis and some straps from his pack. Joel had the filleting knife he uses while fishing in his hand. The shining steel blade is nearly 10 inches long and wickedly sharp. He needed answers and he would have them, whether Kale wanted to give them up or not. It was time for him to improvise.

He yanked up the boy’s shirt, tugging it over his head. When that didn’t suit his purposes he dropped it, grabbed the collar and sliced the shirt from the nape of his neck all the way to his waistband. He dropped the two pieces to fall open around him and flutter in the wind. Kale tried to rise, tried to run, so Joel knocked him down and stomped, hard, on his ankle. He couldn’t be sure if the joint was broken or not but either way the kid wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.

“You know, when I was not much younger than you I had a baby girl. You gotta understand they don’t sleep for the first two years. She was perfect, even when she was screamin’. When she wouldn’t sleep as an infant, I’d take a bottle and feed her while watchin’ documentaries on TV. You remember TV?” Joel didn’t pause. He didn’t care whether he did or not. “There was this one on Vikings that said that they had this way of executing kings. Somethin’ called the Blood Eagle. They’d cut open the back,” he demonstrated with the blunt tip of a thick finger. “They break the ribs away from the spine. And then they pull the lungs out of the chest through the hole they have made.”

Joel yanked the youth back to his knees, and fierce brown eyes met terrified, wide blue ones.

“You got to understand. I’m goin’ to get the information either way. You get to decide how much that hurts. You’re in control of how much you suffer before I kill you. Do you understand? Nod if you understand Kale.

Kale’s eyes filled with tears and his head moved up and down.

“How did you find out who she is?” Joel asked, dragging the point of the knife over the pale back in front of him, but without enough pressure to break the soft skin.

“There was a bulletin. It said you’d gone missing, that she was important for the cause. That we had to find her and bring her to Salt Lake City at all costs.” Kale realised what he had done, how he had betrayed his fellow Fireflies and he began to weep. The dense woodland Joel had dragged him to from the river deadened and absorbed the sound.

“Stop cryin’. Calm the fuck down. Get your shit together.” Joel waited calmly for the kid to sort himself out. “Talk me through it. What happened next?”

Kale stared at Joel mouth shut, looking for all the world like a child trying to avoid their broccoli. Joel tried not to laugh.

“Look, you can pretend you’re tough, but then I’ll just have to prove to you that you’re not. Your move, champ.”

The silence continued.

“OK, you called it.”

Joel flipped him face down and dropped a heavy knee to the bottom of his spine. He pressed the knife to the left of his spine and ran it smoothly from shoulder blade to the bottom of his ribcage. Kale squirmed under him, moaning and hissing with pain. Joel carved off a two inch wide strip of skin from the back of the young man in front of him, and then lifted him back onto his knees. Kale’s face was red and his blue eyes streamed with tears. He flicked the stripped skin from the knife to the floor.

“What happened next? You figured out who she was and then what?”

“I’m not telling you anything else,” he replied, shakily.

Joel moved a hand to his shoulder. “Fine, let’s get finished up here then, shall we?”

“No! No, wait!”

“I’m listenin’.”

“OK. Look, my firefly contact was supposed to meet me three days ago, she never showed up.”

“So, you usually pass on any relevant information to her?”

The kid sniffed. “Yeah, but like I said, this time she never showed up.”

“What about last time?”

“Last time was before I met you guys. She doesn’t know who you are.”

Joel was thoughtful for a few moments.

“How do you know she’s comin’? How do you rearrange a meetin’?”

“She comes once a quarter at the end of the third month on a Saturday.”

“Where do you meet her?”

“At the old P.F. Chang’s in town. The one that’s been converted to a diner.”

“I know the place. How do I recognise this woman?”

Kale clammed up.

“Look kid, you’ve picked a funny time to start showin’ off some backbone. I will trim off some more skin to start you talkin’; how’d you like the sound of that? You want me to start on the right, or carry on with the left?”

The kid stayed silent so Joel flipped him onto his belly again. He started talking the moment Joel touched the knife to his skin.

“She’s called Rosie. It’s not her real name, but she has a tattoo of a rose on the inside of her wrist. She’s about the same size as Ellie, has brown hair, grey eyes and a pale scar on her left cheek. That’s it, that’s all I know.”

Joel moved the knife to just to the right of his spine and, leaning on it, shoved it through his heart.

“That’s all I need,” he said, grimly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there you have it. Got a little dark there for a little bit. 
> 
> Yes I have plans for a sequel. No I haven't written it yet. It might be a month or so before I am happy to start posting some more but that doesn't include the week I will be away from home early next month: give me at least 5 weeks, after which you can start asking how it is coming along. 
> 
> I have several other shorts planned and in progress so there might be two or more one shots before I am back to this arc full-time. 
> 
> Hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it and also interacting with you all along the way. Everyone who has left a comment: you're the real MVPs.


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